Even though I don't have a college degree, I taught college without a degree.
He had his own lawn mowing business before he was 14. By the time Johnathan Lightfoot was 17 years old, he was a supervisor at Target. He always wanted to join the Navy though so when the opportunity came, he took it.
Listen in as he tells Jonaed about how he got into IT after the Navy, worked at Norwegian Cruiseline as a part of their IT department, lectured at MIT and wrote books that out-performed famous competitors.
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Jonaed Iqbal: Welcome to another episode of the notary podcast. Today's guest is Jonathan Lightfoot, but before he introduces himself, I just want all my listeners to support no degree, subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on social media. Do all those things, support the podcast. So, Jonathan, do you mind giving a brief introduction of your.
Johnathan Lightfoot: Sure. My name is Jonathan [00:01:00] Lightfoot. I am currently running my family's 37 year old it consulting company called Sylvia incorporated. Uh, we do a lot of, uh, government contract work and we've just started recently when I came on board with the B2B type work, you know, my, my life is long, so I don't want, I don't want to bore anybody along and joy and everything else, but I'm glad to be here and I'm ready for your questions.
All
Jonaed Iqbal: right. Awesome. So now you kind of, you come from an it background. Now you're more in the leadership position, but let's kind of take it back. How was high school like for you and what'd you want to be in high school?
Johnathan Lightfoot: High school for me was, it was pretty good. I enjoyed my time there. I wasn't popular.
I wasn't a geek. I just floated between, I wanted to be in business. I knew that at a younger age, I knew I wanted to be in business. Um, but I didn't know that. What exactly. Um, I did like computers, so, you know, I got my first computer when I was like 11 years old. So I, um, [00:02:00] I knew I liked it, you know, but primarily in high school I wanted to join the Navy.
Jonaed Iqbal: What was your motivation? Any
Johnathan Lightfoot: reason why, or for one of my grandfather was in the Navy. Okay. Um, and this is gonna sound silly, but I was a really big fan. I still am a big fan of James Bond. It was in the Royal Navy and the Navy is where to go, you know, and I like to travel and I knew that the, maybe they had the most travel services.
So I said, I'm going to join the Navy. So my entire high school career, I thought, you know, I dabbled a daughter go to college, but I think I was going to go to the Navy because of events in high school. Um, I really didn't have a choice.
Jonaed Iqbal: Did you have any jobs in high
Johnathan Lightfoot: school? Oh yeah, I got my very first job.
I was. 1314. Um, well, before that I used to have my own lawnmowing business. Right. So, you know, and I was pretty successful at it. And I had to like, at least, I think at one [00:03:00] point I had 15 yards I would do every Saturday. Yeah. And I was charging at the time by $10 a yard. And I was, I was definitely underpaying myself.
Yeah. Yeah. I
Jonaed Iqbal: mean, in
Johnathan Lightfoot: high school you just
Jonaed Iqbal: think like, whoa, 10 and back then you're like $10. I could, whoa. I got food and everything. $150 in that one day in high school, I'm even now man, $150. Cash is still not too
Johnathan Lightfoot: bad. Exactly. You know? Um, so yeah, but my first official I had a, kind of an under table job. I was like 14.
Where I worked as a bus boy and a truck stop. That was cool though. I liked it. The, the truck stop was really cool. Um, I can make whatever I want it to. And those truck drivers were really smart. They would tell me stories about them. And I liked to doing that, but my very first official official job, um, I was 15 and I worked for target.
It was a, well, no, oh, it was 15. And I worked for a grocery store in Texas called Skaggs off of beta. And I was already on bagger [00:04:00] and I wanted to be a cashier. And I, I was with them for at least two years. And I think I want to be a cashier. I want to be a cashier. I mean, I would take up shifts that weren't mine.
I would show up early. I would work late and I never made me a cashier except they would always hire somebody. You know? Like why, why don't you pass me over? I didn't realize what was going on. So when they had just quit and, um, my dad was mad at. Because I had quit the job without having another job lined up with thing.
And, um, you know, they would, most kids do, you know, at that age, I think I was like 16. I was over at the mall and I just started going to the different stores in the mall, putting in applications. And they all kept saying, no, no, no, they weren't hiring what have you. And, um, I was gone away home and I saw they were building this new store.
And, uh, I didn't know what the store was. It was just, I saw these big red balls and I didn't know what that was, but I saw it, they were just building it and they were hiring. So I went up and winter trailer fill out application and I said, I want to be a cashier. And, um, they initially said, no, [00:05:00] they already had all their kind of sheers.
And, um, I went home. I was kind of depressed, but like two days later they called me back and said, Hey, are you interested in being a cashier still? And I was like, sure. Um, back then to work at target the orientation. I don't know what it's like. Now we're talking 87. They were used to be very strict about orientation.
So if you were late, Get kicked out and that's what happened. Somebody was late, they actually dealt with program opening and I started in there and I loved it. I mean, I worked at, I worked at a target. I would have been my sophomore, my junior year moved to Atlanta, Georgia. There was another target that was opening across the street high school.
I walked over there, said, Hey, I used to work at target in Texas. I lived here and they hired me on as the assistant front end supervisor.
Jonaed Iqbal: Wow.
17 years old. And um, when I moved to Atlanta, I ended up going to what they call open campus school. Um, because I had too many credits, so I could have gone [00:06:00] regular school, but I would have had to sit for like six classes where a counselor was like, Hey, if you go to open campus, you only got us take English.
And the way they had an English class that started like at six o'clock in the morning. So I would be out of there by 8:00 AM. But open campus was not a place you wanted to go. That was where the undesirable students went. But I figured I was like, well, shit, I'm going to be there from six to eight. Those guys are going to be sleeping.
So by the time they're coming to school, I'm leaving. And, um, so I went, did that and then I was able to go right across the street at take up like a, I think it was like an eight 30 shift and I worked all day, you know?
Ah, that's so cool. Now let's kind of go back. You said the grocery store before you figured out what was going on, do you know why they weren't hiring you as a cashier?
Johnathan Lightfoot: Let's just say there were no black cashiers.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay.
Johnathan Lightfoot: Ever. There weren't any black cashiers ever. So, okay.
That's kind of what I thought. And it's unfortunate because sometimes it's like, [00:07:00] and it's good. You sort of left an environment like that because that environment, you will never move up and they'll never value you and you just end up getting bitter and all that.
That's not exist anymore, by the way. They're out of
Jonaed Iqbal: that. Good, good. Deserve to be out of business now. So you work at this target, you know, you're doing a good job. How was it being a supervisor at 17 years old?
Johnathan Lightfoot: It was pretty cool. You know, I hope we put together schedules and you know, I wasn't like a power gets your head type person.
I still rang stuff up and, you know, help fill in when people couldn't come in and things like that. And it was really a lot of fun. Um, the store manager, actually the store manager at the one in Georgia, was friends with the store manager in Texas. I work for there. He asked me the store number and he called over.
He's like, yeah, that's my buddy. And I guess he said, you know, that guy is awesome. That's why he hired me real quickly. Um, but they were talking about sending me. I don't even know if it still exists, but they wanted to send me to, um, something called target university, which I [00:08:00] think it was in Colorado at the time.
He was like, you know, Sorry, university, you could be a department head and I remembered I'm the store manager. He's like one day you could be a store manager. I mean, this is pretty hectic stuff for a 17 year old, like, but, um, I had to decline that because I'd already joined the Navy. So I was like learning during the Navy's.
Um,
Jonaed Iqbal: how has the Navy, like for you? Was it like what you expected and all that, because I know you had this dream. How was that? It
Johnathan Lightfoot: was what I expected. I loved my time in Navy. I spent nine years in, um, it was a great experience. Um, I was an operations specialist. So if you ever see a Navy movie and you see the room where they're in with all the radar and sonar and all, it's a dark room with red lights in it.
That's where I worked in a, in a room in CIC. Um, it was a lot of fun. Uh, I've made a lot of great friends, had a lot of great adventures, got the problem. I thought off, went to war. [00:09:00] Um, it was everything, everything. And then some for me. And, um, I know there are a lot of people who they don't split their same.
They don't. They say, well, my military time was awful. I didn't have the experience. I loved it.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay. No, I mean, it's good. I mean, everybody has all different types of experience, but I'm glad that yours went well. What were some of the biggest lessons you learned kind of from your time in the military?
Johnathan Lightfoot: The biggest one.
All good. All plans, no matter how good they are, go to hell after the first shot is fired.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay. Yeah. What's that Mike Tyson quote, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. I guess that's that applies to the military to,
Johnathan Lightfoot: um, some other things I learned, you know, you never know, even though you may have a different background than someone else, you never know how close you can be.
You know, I knew one guy, he was from West Virginia in the mountains of West Virginia. And he had told me, he said I had never even seen a black person. So I came in the Navy, but we're still really good friends. He go, every [00:10:00] year, he sends me this big Tupperware of deer jerky. Wow. Steer up there and I'll, but, um, you know, it was interesting that to hear his background and from his to hear my background and, you know, we, we, we developed this strange sort of friendship connection with each other and all.
Um, so that was another big lesson. Um, the other one is, you know, if you want to do something, do it, don't think that you can't do something. Um, because I, I was a member of several operations that were just impossible. We shouldn't be able to do that. And we did it, you know, through grit and just getting it done type of a thing.
So I think that's another big lesson is just don't don't let, don't let anybody hold you back.
Jonaed Iqbal: And oftentimes. Ourselves holding ourselves. Right? We think we can't do it. It's impossible. It's never been done people of my background. I don't have the skills for it, but we often have a lot more skills than we have.
So you spent nine years in Navy. What was the [00:11:00] reason you left?
Johnathan Lightfoot: My second duty station? I was there. I was stationed in London, England, and that was a great experience. I got to meet a lot of great people, but London, England was known as I M R Twilight tour for people retiring. So, you know, we had very senior officers admirals who were just, you know, do this last three years are gonna retire.
So, you know, bring the wife, you know, kind of a thing. So I got to talk to a lot of senior officers and I got to be careful how I word this. They encouraged me to think and question things. And, um, that was right. That was before I got it. So that was between 1993 to 1990s six. I want to say I was there. So there was, um, there was some issues in the middle east that were going on and I got the opportunity to meet with, um, Muslims, people of Islam.[00:12:00]
Jonaed Iqbal: Pretty cool. Yeah. So I'm Muslim. So just FYI,
Johnathan Lightfoot: you know, they were pretty cool and I got to eat with them and party with them, hang out with them. So when I came back to the state side and I went to a worship unit, The, the, the mindset at the time was getting ready for, we knew something was going to pop off in the middle east again.
Right. So we already had the storm in it back in 92, but we knew something else was going to pop off. So there was a lot of sentiment against the middle east and the people in the middle east. And I didn't really agree with it. I was like, no, I can't. You know, the thing is when, when you live overseas too, you see the world differently.
Right. I can't just watch CNN and just say, okay, that's what CNN says. That's the way it is. No. Now I got to watch CNN Al Jazeera, BBC, cause I'm like, what's, I need to do all this. What's going on really around the whole topic of everything. [00:13:00]So I just realized that, um, if I was going to be successful in the Navy and if I want the Navy to be successful, because I loved the Navy, I still loved the Navy ball.
My heart. I could not be a voice in the military. Because I was going, I couldn't just take orders again anymore and just, just carry them out. So lucky for me. Um, they had an opportunity to get out. I got out and, um, you know, like I said, I still love the Navy. It's still my biggest thing. Um, I tell people, the person I am today is in large part due to my time in the military, in the Navy and all, but I just knew that I was not, I was not going to be a very good shipmate anymore.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay. No, you did your time. You, you serve, you know, that's very good to know. So now you leave, right. What was the plan like? What'd you do? Was it like, Hey, am I going to relax? Am I going to get a job? How wasn't welded the next step?
Johnathan Lightfoot: [00:14:00] You know, I had a few thousand dollars saved from my time in the military.
Um, but really not that much. So I had to hustle. Right. So before I knew I was getting out six months before it happened and I started hustling, um, trying to get a job and I'll keep mine. This is around 19 90, 19 98. Right? So the internet is not what it is today. Back then. Um, we were, I want to say we were right.
We were right either right after the start of the internet bubble building up and all. So, you know, I was, you know, deployed on a ship. So we had internet access somewhat kind of, um, through AOL, but I managed to find a job in California. And, um, so when I left, um, my flew to California and, you know, stayed at this flea bit flea bitten hotel motel until I got a couple.
You know, weeks of paychecks under my belt, and I know I could move into an apartment at all, but yeah, I went to work immediately. There was no [00:15:00] relaxation time. Um, I was actually the operations manager for a call center and that was, that was just crazy, you know, um, we had people basically answering phones, making minimum wage, so it was not uncommon for them not to come to work.
So I would have to sometimes do their shift or to people's shifts back to back when, you know, get in early, I was like, it was like, I was waiting for everything and I had to fix everything kind of a thing at all. But I learned a lot about managing people, which was different than the military. So it was a good transition from, you know, in the military, you know, I was an
So if he said, Hey, do. Nobody questioning into this civilian world. And it wasn't the same. It wasn't a matter of just because you have a position. If somebody is going to do something, um, you have to establish trust and all those other soft skills around that and get [00:16:00] to get jobs done. And, you know, it's pretty hard to convince people sometimes, you know, they're making minimum wage to come to work.
I'll give you $50 just hanging out with me for the day.
Jonaed Iqbal: Well, it was minimum wage back then. It was like three, $4.
Johnathan Lightfoot: Um, I want to say it was like, I can't remember, but I do remember our highest paid person was making like nine 50 or 9 75 an hour. I
Jonaed Iqbal: mean, it was a different time, right. That money went further, but yeah,
Johnathan Lightfoot: a little, a little bit.
It was in Southern California. So we can only go so far. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay. So what job can for
Johnathan Lightfoot: that after that? Well, your people are offering, going to hate me, but I hate it by my year in California. And I barely go back to that state. It just, I didn't have a good experience there. I didn't like it at all, but I I'm from Miami, Florida.
So I flew back to the east coast to Miami and I took on a couple of jobs until I found my, what I call my [00:17:00] best job since leaving the Navy.
Oh, the best job I worked for this little bitty cruise line company, you may have heard of it called Norwegian cruise line. I got hired there. I worked for a company. I was actually hired there as a contractor. So I was hired through electronic data systems. So many readers of listeners may know who that is.
Um, most probably don't, they've evolved and currently their name now is pair of time. But, um, EDS was a. You know, people talk about fangs. Yeah. I would say EDS was a thing back in the nineties. Right. But they hired me to work the help desk. So, um, but they didn't tell me they didn't have a help desk. So it was just me and I had to establish this help desk thing.
And then we hired some more people and it was a lot of fun. I learned, um, desktop support. So I'd go on desktop support calls. And, um, that's where I, I want to say, I really got deep [00:18:00] into it. Did some server admin learned a as 400 mainframes. And I did, I was at corporate for a year and I had mentioned in passing that I wanted to work on the cruise ships, but I couldn't because I was a contractor and only NCL employees could go work on the ships.
Also working on the ships that Norwegian cruise line at the time was an honor. You had to be really, really good. I mean, everybody in for. If somebody from the ships came, it was like, oh, so-and-so's coming in from the ships. You know? Cause that's, you know, that's the customer folk that that's where the money is made is on those ships and all.
So you gotta be really good in your field. And on the ships, it wise, they have a system, they have a job, two jobs called the systems manager and the assistant systems manager. And basically the systems manager is in charge of every computer that you could think of on the cruise ship. So if you've ever been on a cruise, [00:19:00]everything from that checkout computer to the computers that you use at the shore, excursions to the cash registers the handheld things.
Basically if it had a computer chip in it, it's a manager's responsibility to keep it up. Right. So you have to know a lot of stuff about it. Networking, computers, programming, server administration, just it's, it's an all encompassed job. Right? So anyway, the rumor was out that I wanted to work on the ships and the people that I was in the Navy and they said, oh, you should do it.
And, uh, one day, um, I was working, like, I went to the bathroom and I was washing my hands and I was out of the stall, comes the vice president of it. And so he's washing his hands. He's like, oh, you're working late. I was like, yeah, you are. Yeah, this is, I heard you want to work on the ships. I said, yes, I do.
Um, but I can't. And he was like, why not see over in the region at the time, even though I was a contractor, you weren't treated any differently. [00:20:00] So we were treated like employees. I don't even think he knew that I was a contractor, but I said, you know, I'm a contract with EDS. And he says, oh, okay. He was like, well, they were saying.
And also as I was leaving the bathroom, he's like, you know, I think the ETS contract is coming due about three weeks later. So my manager comes in, he's kind of gruff looking at me and he's like, you, you, you talked to the right person, you go upstairs to the fifth floor and talk to shipboard HR for an interview.
I was like, oh, okay. So, you know, I went upstairs and found the HR person I was supposed to talk to. And it was the weirdest interview I've ever had where I sit down and she starts talking about the different ships, the different itineraries saying, oh, I've been on this ship. And it's a great itinerary.
Cause you get to see this, you can see that. I'm like, okay. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And she's got like these brochures of all the ships and then at the end, and I remember I'm there thinking I'm going here for an [00:21:00] interview right. At the end. She says, so what ship would you like to do? What she's like, well, what should we do?
And I remember I picked the Norwegian dream cause they were out of Europe and I said, I'll take the dream. I would want to go to the dream. And she was like, okay. And then she just turned on turning her seat and starts typing. And I'm sitting there for awhile and I'm like, what's going on here? And I was like, um, are you going to ask me any questions?
And she said, oh yeah, you have a passport. I was like, um, I think my passport is expired and she pulled out a notepad and she writes down this thing on a notepad. She picks up the phone, she's talked to somebody. She gives me the note on the notepad and says report here tomorrow morning at eight o'clock.
And it was the address to the Miami passport office where you can get a passport in like 24 hours. So I'm like, okay, And I was like, is that it? She's like, yeah, I'm just typing up your orders. You'll be leaving in two weeks. That was my interview. I was like, [00:22:00]you don't get to ask me any questions or anything like that.
But, um, I went out there and I was going to be what they call it an assistant systems manager. So I was coming to assist the systems manager and, um, two or three weeks later, I'm flying out to Europe, to Dover. England flew into Heathrow, took, took the bus down it over and I reported to the ship. Wow. I was told originally I would be an assistant for about two years.
So that would be eligibility conferences as a manager. Well, I was there for about three months and I was for the systems manager.
Jonaed Iqbal: Wow, man, you knew the right people, but we'll do the right thing. So I want to ask you the person you met in the bathroom, did you make a good impression on him before that he knew
Johnathan Lightfoot: that.
Oh, yeah. Frank Rao. He's he was the vice president of it for Norwegian cruise line. At the time he's retired. We're still connected on LinkedIn, but yeah, he knew me. I mean, I'd helped him with a couple of things. We'd had meetings and I was, um, that was a weird time. So when I was working there, that was around [00:23:00] 1999 and the widget cruise, I was on a 400 mainframes and they were shifting to PCs.
Right. So I didn't know anything about Wayne phrase by Lou PCs for my time. So I was there talking about, you know, helping with the transition, answering the phones as well on the help desk. So, you know, and I was white papers for him about, you know, what, these computers can be done, what we can do with them.
I mean, believe it or not back then a lot of us were still like, well, what are we gonna do with these computers now? Everything's, you know, what's the computer gonna do kind of a thing and all, so he knew of me, it wasn't just out of the blue. But naturally I never spoke to him about working on the ships because I would have been in proper, you know, we spoke with him about whatever task I was doing that dealt with them.
Wow. So
Jonaed Iqbal: it's just interesting that you being in the bathroom at the right time, changed the direction of your career. So now you got promoted in three months. Why do you think you got promoted so quick?
Johnathan Lightfoot: Like what'd you do? I [00:24:00] got promoted so quick. So being on those cruise ships, being an assistant systems manager is a great job, right?
Because you do, what are the systems matter? Manager tells you. You really don't have any responsibilities are really accountable to anything. So you're just there to do whatever they tell you to do. You know, if they say upgrade that server, upgrade that server, they say, go set up the wifi and back then wifi was not what it is today.
It was go set it up. You did that set of checkup, peers, do that. You know, if my pager went off, I go and reset a cash register or something. But most time, you know, I spend my time in a crew bar after work. So that was where I was partying with. One of my friends I made up on the ships and just having a good old time.
And, uh, one day I had answered a call and I went back to my cabin and I got. A page from the justice matters report to the it office. And I'm like, oh, I'm thinking I'm in trouble. Like, oh, did I not do my maintenance? And I forget something. And I walk in and he's like, Hey yeah, Dennis wants to talk to you.
Dennis was our shoreside boss. [00:25:00]And I was like, why does Dennis want to talk to me? You know? And listen, the systems manager has to leave because I'm, his mom needs to be put into a home. And unfortunately I don't have another system's manager to send out there and I need you to take over a systems manager.
I was like, oh really? You know, you know, these ships are huge and the computer systems are large. I'm like, I've only been here for three months and now you're going to be in charge of this entire ship, if you will. And I remember the systems manager. He had his bags packed already. We were in Germany. He had his bags packed already and you know, Dennis hung up the phone and Chris like slapped me on the shoulder and says, you'll be fine.
Grab this bag and walked out the door. So here I am in the it room. And I must've been in a catatonic state because I just sat there for a good while. Like, oh crap, what am I going to do? What if something breaks? I can't fix [00:26:00] it. And they didn't have an assistant at the time. Cause it was just me. I was the assistant.
So now I'm in charge of the entire ship of the ends, all these calls over itself. So that's how I got promoted. You know, probably I think a large part of it was, um, when I was there, you know, I worked hard. I learned as much as I could, as fast as I could. I tried to do a good job. Just what I've always been trained to do.
And I think that, I don't think if I, if I hadn't had that history, Dennis would have probably told Chrissy, go. So when I look back on it now, literally right now at this bump size woman, I'm kind of proud of that. You know, that I will, was able to, to instill enough trust that they were going to give this guy with three months experience working on the ships, this entire responsibility, and able to help Chris get home to take care of his mom.
No,
Jonaed Iqbal: that's amazing. Now how are the first three months like for you? Because now you got promoted. You're in this catatonic state. Now you actually got to do the work. How, how how'd you get up to speed?
Johnathan Lightfoot: It was hectic. [00:27:00] Luckily the ship, I had a lot of friends on the ship, so they all knew me. Um, remember I was spending my time in the crew bar, so we're all buddies and they're like, don't worry about it.
Don't take your time. You know, like, you know, half the registers on the, or half the computers on the front desk don't work. And they're like, we know it's taking you some time. And so they were really patient and, you know, I figured out what to do and everything else. And, um, but I quickly got up to speed, you know, um, Credited being a very fast learner and to get to speed pretty quickly on what needed to be done.
And luckily on the shifts, we had what we call SOP standard operating procedures. So they went wrong. I had a guide I could use that could tell me, okay, step-by-step, here's how you do this. And things like that. Plus also a lot of the systems that interface directly with shoreside versus work with when I was in headquarters a lot too.
Jonaed Iqbal: Wow. That's cool. So how long did you keep the job with the [00:28:00] Norwegian cruise
Johnathan Lightfoot: lines? I would say when the, we to cruise a lot, I left them in 2006. So seven years, six, seven years. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed my time, worked on several of the different ships and things like that, but I ended up leaving. I was in Hawaii one day Honolulu.
We had just pulled in. I was doing the pride of America at the time and friend of mine, she worked at Hawaiian telecom and, um, Found out that we were both in Honolulu, so had lunch today on a, on a day. And uh, she said, I can get your job and why it's alcohol when to come work for me. Yeah. Whatever you got on my cruise ship, we went did another week.
We met for lunch again, I got a job right now. I will hire you for it right now. So I took the job at that moment. Um, walked on the ship, went to HR and said, I, I resigned, went to my cabin, packed up my stuff and walk off the ship. Wow. [00:29:00] That's interesting. Luckily, there was another systems manager in the area, so they would just pay and he wanted to come.
He wanted to work on the ships, but he was short-sighted and they would never give him a chance. When I said, I want to leave. They said, Hey, the guy, here's your side.
Jonaed Iqbal: No, that's amazing that, you know, it just shows how the importance of building relationships also doing work so that these relationships will deliver.
I want to just discuss, like working on a cruise ship. Cause that's a different lifestyle, right? Like you live on the ship, um, family life and all this stuff. Can you discuss some of that?
Johnathan Lightfoot: What time I was single. That's a big plus. We've got to work on cruise ships, right? It is a, you work seven days. It's a tough life.
Now I was fortunate because as an assistant, an assistant manager where we're senior leadership, right? So we're all, so I have my own state room and I didn't have the, you know, you hear, you see those videos. They're like, oh, there's six roommates. Or that I have my own state room. My room, [00:30:00] I say, will drag say larger than some of the guest cabins.
Um, I had the ability to work. I could go eat in the restaurant, the regular restaurants go to the bar, go see the shows I got to where I got to go off ship a lot to go on shore to do short excursions. But you do work seven days. Every day. And as an officer, I only did four months on two months off. So you work four months, take two months vacation.
Then you go to another ship or the same ship. I would get sent to different ships though. It is all consuming. So in my cabin, for instance, I had a computer that monitored all the systems on the ship. They would have this alarm that went off. So if it's two o'clock in the morning, you know, and the bar is can't, can't close because they can't get the receipts to go through or something I'm getting woken up and have to go there.
There were several days where literally I would literally put, just put my head on the pillow and bill [00:31:00] be back up and then do what you have to do. And all there's a, there's a very weird comradery that happens between the ownership screws, because we're all stuck out there together. You know, we're internet, it's an international cruise so that there could be over 150 different nationalities.
Anyone. Being American, let's say it's back then. The crew let's say crew count was 900. There might be 30 Americans on the ship, 30 American crew members. Right? So it's not an easy job for Americans to get. And so that was part of the mystique, I guess, is being an American on a cruise ship working, especially in rollout.
It was. But if you look, if you've ever been on a cruise, you'll always notice the Americans are always in, like they're not doing the stuff like being a waiter, unless you go to Hawaii. If you go to Hawaii and the, um, part of America ship, you will see Americans as waiters, bartenders, and things like that.
But on the international [00:32:00] ships, you'll hardly ever see them. You'll see them as cruise director, cruise staff, they might be technical production it potentially. And that's about it. There's only like four or five departments that an American will work in, will be placed on a cruise. And there's reasons behind that
Jonaed Iqbal: won't succeed because I'm pretty sure people didn't like, eh, crucially have fun.
I get to work on a cruise ship, but then you get, like, I could imagine if you have a family divorces and all these other things, so who should not sort of take that type of
Johnathan Lightfoot: job. First of all, if you're not a hard worker, like I said, you're going to work every day. You know, some days are going to be longer than other days.
So that's the first disqualifier. If you are married and you have a family, you might have some struggles with that. You know, imagine you're going to be away. I was lucky I had one of the shortest cycles, four and two, but sometimes those crew staff, people they're out there for six months. Right? So you have a year you're away from your family.
If you have a marriage and you're in, it's a [00:33:00] Rocky marriage, it's not solid. You ain't gonna want to, you're not gonna want to be out there on there. It's not a job to get into the scanner. You can't scam your way into those jobs. So for it's like what I did since I was a manager and it's a tough job because there is no support, right.
That ship pulls off that pier, you better know how to fix every piece of gear, computer it things. And you have to be multidisciplined right. Like I said, earlier, networking server administration, they still want mainframes on ships too. So you gotta understand how that works, not to mention point of sales and all these other different things you have to know.
So the interview process is, um, pretty extensive because they don't want you to get out there and be like, oh, I can't get the ship to close. That's no good. You know, so you're not going to fake your way onto it. They are going to look for, for the assistances manager. That's an Inn. You could call that an entry-level person, but you're still going to be, [00:34:00] you're still going to have your CCNA.
You're still going to have your basic certifications that you have to have. And you're going to need to have experience around that. And if you want to go for systems manager, yeah. You should have your CCNP. You should understand, um, advanced server administration, maybe even some programming, because there's a lot of custom programs out there that if it stops working or your it's throwing errors, you gotta be able to get into the code and take a look at it and, and, and fix it.
Sometimes. Now I think they have a component around satellite communications because that's the one thing you don't think about it. How do we could talk to the shore way out to see satellites. So you have to understand how that works, which is where the CCNP comes in the hand and handy. And also, yeah, just a lot of experience.
Um, but if you're lucky to get a job as an assistant, you can you'll learn the job in, um, after, when there was an opening and the cruise lines before pandemic, they were making these ships like every other month releasing a new one, right? So there were lots of growth [00:35:00] there, but you know, it's, it's a good job.
So not working hard if you don't work hard, if you have a family, um, if you're not up all your skills, you're going to suffer. If you're looking for a nine to five, you're going to, you're not going to do well out there. Cause it's not a nine to five job. Like I told you, I was getting paged at two o'clock in the morning.
Sometimes I might get another one at four, another one at eight, you know, I might be up all day long, especially a few days. That's when you don't hit port, if you go in it just for the money, you're going to probably feel. Because it's just a really tough life, you know? Yes. The money is good. And I was, at that time, a systems manager made about $7,000 a month.
You have no expenses. So everything I did on the ship was free. You know, I could just sign my name to in the bars or in the restaurants. If I want to go on a short excursion, I would just go down and talk to my buddy in the shore excursion, you know, the manager like, Hey, look me up. I want to go see this.
He's like, yeah, here you go. You know, you can make a lot of money. So, [00:36:00] um, and back then once till the end back, then he spent you in cash. Yeah, they didn't take out taxes. You're an independent contractor. So you could literally, you know, making about $7,000 a month over a four month period, you could bring home $28,000 cash.
I had several times where I had my little money belt strapped to me with all this money on me and going in and all, but yeah, you know, now the two months you're off, you don't get paid. Right. So, you know, here back then, you know, 7,000 times that he does $56,000 a year. Now you said to take out money for your taxes and everything else.
You're making some good bank back then. And I would imagine that it's even crazier now and I don't want to pay you in cash anymore. I think. Yeah, they probably can't
Jonaed Iqbal: get away with that. Now, how would you say that industry has changed? Because back then wifi technology wasn't as advanced now it's just, you know, much more connected and all that.
How would you say that industry has changed in general, the cruise line industry? Just it for a cruise [00:37:00] line, or would you say.
Johnathan Lightfoot: I think it's very similar, but with a lot more enhanced services, you know, back then the wifi would go out all the time. I'm sure it's much more stable. Now, last time I was on a cruise ship was back in 2014.
I want to say, and the displays were bigger. Like now we have these whole wall displays, which we didn't have before we were, we were like that flat flat panel monitors. So now all that has to be done. Um, as far as I know, they still have mainframes, but they may not. It's uh, I would imagine they're using the cloud as well, instead of having the on-premise data as soon as like we used to have.
So I think that's, that's something else that has happened also. Um, we got more handheld devices, right? Get the iPads and the surface computers that people are bringing on board. And they're probably interviewing. And also, I think it's probably in the same vein as what you see in corporate today, [00:38:00] you got to keep in mind that, you know, on these ships, there might be one systems manager and maybe one or two assistants.
So you have 2, 3, 4 people at the most, we have to maintain all that stuff and you don't know what you're going to get when you're going to get it. And you didn't, and that's the thing. I don't want to jump on people just going for search. When you get that real world experience, that's where you see how it all works together and connects together.
And if you're just going for search, you're getting it siloed. But when you get into the real world, you'll see how the networking piece hits with the wifi piece hits with the way the computers interacting. So you really have to understand how all that's working and, and realize that just because this monitor or this registered, isn't getting a signal, it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the model.
It may be a multiple things you're going to look at to really get to what's happening with that registered. No,
Jonaed Iqbal: thank you. That's phenomenal advice. So now you've got the next job. How was that like for you [00:39:00] and how is the lifestyle different? Cause now you're onshore not
Johnathan Lightfoot: traveling. It was a little different.
So I was, I was put in charge. I was a senior desktop support engineer, as well as, um, a server administrator. Um, for a lot of surfers. I don't want to tell com I made a lot of money there. I can't tell you I was in Hawaii for a year and I can't tell you that. The thing about Hawaii, um, I got an apartment that was right across the street from headquarters and I was, I was pulling 14 hours.
What had happened was, um, this company called, um, the Carlisle group had purchased Hawaiian telecom from Verizon. And part of the purchase was that Hawaiian talk had to get off of Verizon's backbone. Well, we used to happen in Hawaii. This is kind of funny was if you're in Honolulu and you want to call somebody in along your call, went to the states mainland, then it went back down into Honolulu, big picture, right.
But every single call did [00:40:00] that. If you want to call somebody across the street from you, it went to the states and it came make back to the why. Right? And so Verizon said, you got to, if you're going to take this over, you got to cut off that backbone. So everything happens within Hawaii. That was, and they only had a year to do that.
So we were busting our butt, you know, with the, um, uh, switch centers, computers. We have to basically do a whole overhaul it overhaul, not to mention that all of the support ITC functions that were happening in Verizon, which were on the mainland, we had to bring into white as well. So we had to hire a whole bunch of people for network security and for other departments that we didn't have before, but a credit to the Hawaiians, you know, it's, you probably have heard that, you know, if you're not from Hawaii, you're basically an outsider and that's very true.
They're very family oriented. They are very close. I don't care how [00:41:00] trying of a time they may have. I hardly ever saw them yelling or arguing with each other. They treat each other, like they're all one big family. And it was really refreshing to see that and to be a part of that, I like to think I was accepted to a point, even then only to a point because I was an outsider.
But, um, it was really great. Um, the, the comradery, the connections, just getting stuff done, the positive attitude, that whole, or, um, vibe that they have down there. It was really great. Now I, to this day, I still have a lot of respect for the Hawaiians and, um, for my fellow Hawaiians out there, um, just like you, you all were annexed illegally.
You all were still a country in that. You should still have your sovereignty. I, why natives though, what I'm talking about? So they know supportive of Hawaii, Hawaii independence.
Jonaed Iqbal: No, that that's just amazing to hear. So was it the contract ended? What caused you to sort of move to the next
Johnathan Lightfoot: [00:42:00] job? I got island fever for one.
Now this is very interesting. This, this point is what I call a pivot point in my life. An inflection point in my life. I got a call one day from this group that was. Working at Hawaiian Telcom, but they weren't actually, they were a Carlyle group, B you business unit. Now the car group, um, is probably, as I tell people, if you've never heard of it, it's probably the largest company you've never heard of.
And they are what I call the original venture capitalists back when people were talking about, oh, I got a million dollars. These guys were buying billion dollars. Right. And they don't invest in little crappy stuff. They, they go for infrastructure. Like I said, they bought Hawaii telecom. That's a telephone infrastructure.
They have other projects, but this group called me, it was like four people. And they said, Hey, our server isn't working. And also that was server administrator. Like, what server are you talking about? Oh, we got a server down here. What? We had a data center with [00:43:00] all the servers. And what are you talking about?
You have a server down there. So I went down there and sure enough, they had a server down there and I'm like, what is this thing? They said, oh, it's our SharePoint. What's that never heard of it, but they told me that, you know, what was going on. I looked into it and I was like, oh, it has a SQL backend. All right.
Okay. Yeah. Your keys off. So I was able to set up, you know, fix the key, but when I was poking around and I was like, this looks very interesting. And I was asking him like, well, how are you using it? And they were telling me how they were using it. And it was this and doing this. I was like, oh, wow, that afternoon.
It was lunchtime. I went out with my friend mark, we went to job juice, we're walking back. And I told mark, I said, I think I'm going to quit my job today. He's like what I was like, yeah, I think I'm gonna quit today. And he kind of laughed and we got, we made it back to why talk home. I went down to the data center, whereas my boss was Howard and I told Howard that I wanted to work on this server called SharePoint.[00:44:00]
I want to spend more time on it now, Howard, at the time he was at least 40 years until. He got involved with it back when I, before I was born back sixties. Right. And he was like, what? He's like, why he's like, ah, I don't think, you know, your time is better spent being a server admin. You know, there's only four people that use this.
We have over 2,500 other employees that need to be supported. And literally Jeanette, my, my life flashed in front of me and all I saw was I'm going to be updating servers. I'm going to be racking and stacking servers only answering these stupid calls. No, I don't want to do that. So right then and there at those hard as well, if not going, let me work on SharePoint.
I quit. He hired was kind of a breast guy, but at one point he stopped, he stopped. He sat down and he says, Jonathan, are you sure you want to do that? I was like, yeah, I think so this is Jonathan. I've been in this game for a long time. Microsoft always puts up brand new software that they, [00:45:00] most of which they don't do anything with, it ends up dying.
And you're about to stake your entire career on this. SharePoint thing. And he, I think he called it point share.
And I said, yeah, I think so. So, um, I gave my two weeks notice and he was happy for that. And I went back to my cubicle and I was in my cubicle for maybe 20 minutes. And then security showed up. HR decided that no, we don't want you to be sodas. So I got a squirt out of the building and I went to, um, I want to say, I think it was copy USA or computer city or whatever it was, it was on Bishop street.
I walked down there, I went and bought a very expensive laptop and a fat-free monitor. So that was at least half of my savings. And I'm walking back home with these two big bags and I was like, what the hell have I done? I just, I'm in the most expensive metropolitan area in America and I just quit my job.
And I just took at least half of my savings [00:46:00] and I dumped them into these products here. No big deal. Get back to my place, call my friend mark. And he said, Hey mark, I need the notebook. See back then all software for Microsoft came on CS CD. And we had a notebook that had all the software in there. So he brought it over to me and he was like, I can't believe you quit your job.
Oh my God. I was like, ah, yeah, whatever, give me that notebook. You know, so I take the notebook and I'm at the time SharePoint was on, it was called. Um, it's not the name you have it called right now. But, um, I got. It was, but it said it sat on the not Microsoft exchange CD and it was like a little file CD.
So I burned that I'm burning out copies of that. And for the next 30 days, I basically just install SharePoint on a stone SharePoint installed SharePoint, broke, SharePoint, uninstalled, SharePoint, troubleshoot. I just, that's all I did. I went downstairs. I would go downstairs, buy me some ramen noodles and some hot [00:47:00] dogs and some sodas.
And I go back up and literally I did not no time at the time. I that's all I did just do that. You know, and I really learned it very well. Ended up staying there about two months and you know, the rent is expensive. So my little savings is like dwindling fast. And I was talking to my dad who lived in DC and he was like, why don't you come over here?
Hang out with us. I was like, sure. So I went over there and, um, Word started spreading that I knew SharePoint. So I started getting calls from people saying, Hey, can you come and train us on this SharePoint thing? Or how can you help us set up a SharePoint farm or having a SharePoint site? Now it helped. I skipped a lot of stuff, but you know, during that time I was doing, uh, uh, installing in, in learning SharePoint.
I was also on, uh, different groups and working the SharePoint people, Microsoft people. So I guess that's how the word spread that, Hey, there's, there's this guy in DC [00:48:00] and there are others around the country too, but people came to me and I started actually just freelancing doing SharePoint stuff. So
were
Jonaed Iqbal: you making a full-time income?
Johnathan Lightfoot: Not as much as I was making a wife, but I could live, I could survive. You know, I was traveling like crazy, cause I was getting calls to go to Denver and salt lake city and other places. Um, I was doing a contract. I was doing some work for a government contracting company up there and um, they asked me if I wanted to.
Work for them being a SharePoint person. I was like, sure. So I started doing that, which was primarily, is doing SharePoint, training, training, end users and administrators, how to, what to do with SharePoint and all. And that's what I got my full time paid job, being a SharePoint person at all. So that would have been around 2007, 2008 WSS.
That's what we used to be called WSS 2.0 or something like that. It was, well, it wasn't [00:49:00] actually called SharePoint at the time. It was something like WSS, but that's how I got my first job. And, um, I was working at the sec. Um, I was a trainer training office, but you know, SurePoint stuff too. Well. Okay. A friend of mine, his name is ducks where he was, he's like a mentor to me.
We were talking one night, one day and he says, you ever thought about speaking? I was like, oh no, I can't speak. You know, um, the people I'd seen who speakers were. Like gods to me, I was like, get on the stage. Oh my God, what I'm going to talk about. But then he planted a seed in my head and I said, oh, I think I do want to speak.
You know? And there was something called SharePoint, Saturday was coming up. So I applied say, I want to be a speaker. And I fill out the whole speaker request form and they accepted me. I was like, oh my God. So I I'd forgotten what topic I had written down, but to figure out the topic that I put together, my presentation and, um, I gave the presentation.
It was really awesome. Now, when I was putting together the presentation [00:50:00] though, one night I was, it was late at night and, um, you know how you get bored and you start surfing. And I, I came across a Riley. The publishing company and they have this whole page or pages on how to get published. So I read the information.
I was like, oh, that's pretty neat. You know, good to know, sheltered my head and kept it going well, I'll take it to the presentation. It was awesome because I gave the presentation. It was supposed to be like 45 minutes presentation, 15 minute question, answer the question answer went for an hour. And the organizers actually came in and said, Hey, look, you're supposed to clear up this room, but we can see there's a lot of engagement here.
So we're just going to move the next presentation to another room. And I was driving home and I was like, wow, that was an awesome presentation. Everybody loved it. I can make a book out of this. And then I remembered from surfing few weeks back. So I put together a proposal book proposal for the book. And, um, it got rejected,[00:51:00]
got rejected and I was kind of bummed out, but I was like, you know, I'm like, I'm going to redo the, redo this book thing, and I'm going to get this deal. And about a week later, I got a call from an editor at a Riley. It was the editor who rejected my publication. So he says, hi, my name is Kenyon. I'm the one who rejected your publication.
I'm like the nerve, you know, my face or something. And he says, no, the reason I rejected you is because we already have secured our publishing schedule for the year. So what, what they do a lot of times, and this is advisory, but it wants to get published. They set up these things called publishing schedules.
So at a certain point around April, I think it is. They finalize what books are going to publish that year. Okay. My book proposal. And after they had finalized that, so then they didn't reject it because it was a bad book or a bad idea. It was just, they were locked up already this year. So we can't bring it on.
He said, but there is this other book [00:52:00] that the author can't finish. I liked your writing style because I submitted actual the first chapter. So I like your writing style and it's very close to how the other authors. Would you be willing to write the book? I was like, sure. I guess. And he says, yeah, you know, we got a couple chapters from him, but you know, you can throw them away if you want, you don't have to use them.
You can just do whatever you want with the book was like, oh, okay, well, it's a pretty big book. I think I better use whatever he has. I better make it work. And he sent me the pages and I was like, oh, I can't use these pages. You know, also I had five weeks to write the book. So I ended up just, um, writing the book from scratch almost.
I use a couple of stuff from it, from, from Chris and all. And actually I got to talk to him cause I was like, what were you thinking in this area? And where were you thinking of this area? So he helped, really helped me collaborate. And that's why all that book, his name is there because you helped me put together with the book, the original author.
It almost didn't get written though. [00:53:00] I was like two weeks in. Up to that point. Every computer book I had read was boring. It was all black and white texts, couple of black and white illustrations of flow charts and stuff that made no sense and something. I want to make a different book. I want to make a book that's going to be appealing and it's going to make people want to read it.
Right. So SharePoint was still relatively new. So this is around 2010. I'm writing this book and, um, they had just released SharePoint 2010 that I had because of my experience. I already had an advanced copy of it. So I've been working with it for awhile. So I wrote the book, but. It was very basic. I was talking about things like how to upload a document, how to create a library, just basic stuff.
And I remember I was talking to my editors several times. I like this book is so stupid. You know, nobody's going to read this book. Everybody knows his knowledge. And he was like, not everybody knows it, you know it because you've been doing it for so long and you're talking to other [00:54:00] people, but there are millions of people who've never even touch SharePoint, even know what it is.
Right. So we ended up writing the book and I got it done in five weeks. And, um, that was SharePoint 2010, plain and simple. I call the SharePoint coloring book and it's out of print now, but it's still on ever gone. People are still selling copies of it, use copies, but it's very colorful. It's very colorful.
We got step-by-step instructions and lots of screenshots. It's a great book. I love the way it looks, you know, so I was writing it. My editor told me, he says, you know, you have one competitor. That is the SharePoint 2010 for dummies written by the Fordham is group or group that I respected a lot because I use their books.
I was like, oh my God, how are we going to compete against them? They do, they do it. Right. And I went to Barnes and noble and I picked up a copy of it because you know, the bar is open. You just grab a book and sit down. You don't even have [00:55:00] to buy it. Yeah. You know, I don't think I've ever bought a book or read them.
It's like the paid library, I guess. So I went through that whole book in that afternoon and I was like, just say nothing. So I called the editor back and I said, we're going to beat their asses. Literally. I said, we're going to beat their asses. He's like, are you sure? I was like, we're going to debt book sucks.
Our book is much better than that book. And so finished. The book was released right before the SharePoint, 2010 CA the SharePoint conference, which they changed name. I forget what the name of the car is now, but it was Microsoft's one of Microsoft's largest con conferences after bill. I think that year they had like 30,000 people show up and it was an Anaheim, I think.
But we released the book in a sold it's sold like crazy. I mean, I'm getting my monthly reports on book sales. I'm like, oh my God. You know? And I was like, [00:56:00] calling my editor, like, is this, are these numbers? Right? He's like, yeah, they're all right. Now here's the funny thing. About a month, maybe six weeks after my book came out, the SharePoint 2010 for dummies book got pulled.
They pulled it off the shelves. And, um, my editor told me about it. So yeah, they just pulled it off. I was like, why did they pull it off? He was like, I guess you're beating them. You're beating them in the Hills or something's not right. About a month or two later, they put a new book out SharePoint 10 are too.
So anybody, if you have your shit, if you have the SharePoint 2010 for dummies book, look to see, do you have, uh, the revision two edition? That was the edition they put out after my book came out, but there are one version it disappeared. So if you've got one then for the collectors, you may have a lot of money there, but that will repeat.
I, my understanding, I'm not sure if this is true, but I was one of the few times that they've ever pulled a book and it happened so fast. Cause remember they didn't release SharePoint 2010 to the public until like [00:57:00] October when our book came out and they'd already had a SharePoint 2010 book out like around June or June or July.
So it was only out for a few months and they pulled it. Yeah. We beat their ass, just like I predicted we would. And later on that year, I actually got an award for the book from the international association of technical writers. Or one of the best written books of 2010 to 2010 at all. So that book led to another book, SharePoint 2010, um, all in one, I think, or the Bible.
I can't remember the name of this psych one. That was a collaborative book I did with about five other authors, but we each did like three or four chapters, a piece that book did pretty good. And then a while, a little bit after that SharePoint 2013 came out and I was asked again, would I do a followup book or unsure three 13?
And I was like, sure. You know, we use the same format with it for [00:58:00] 2010, but we'll just update it for the new interface and new things to do. One thing about me is in the it world, I realized that minorities and women, we don't get many opportunities that I could see. It was really, if you went to a conference, you saw the same type of person.
Presenting. So when 2013 came out, I wanted to bring a woman onto the book as well. And I was working with the young lady, Michelle Lopez, and I reached out to her and I said, Hey, would you go off of this book with me? And we brought her on board. And also we brought Scott on board too, and all, but that was a very deliberate thing.
And she didn't want to do it at first. She was like, I don't really want to SharePoint. You know, I was like, he knew a lot about it. That's what we do all day. And she's like, oh, I don't know, like you got to do this. So we bought her, we got her on the book as well. And that book sold, we did great on that book as well.
But after that third book, I was burnt out [00:59:00] because I've written these books within a two year period on top of your work. Yeah. And I had a full-time job. Right. So you don't realize what I was writing. I was working full time, so I would get home. I wouldn't start writing, writing until like 10 o'clock. And I would write until three, take a nap, wake up at six because I lived in ma Colombian.
So, and I worked in DC. So I had to get up around six to get on the road by seven to get to work by eight. And then I would work a full day, get home, have dinner, play with my daughter and then start up writing again. So it was really tiring. And I felt like, you know, I've written three books and they're all best sellers.
I mean, it's funny to me when I go back on Amazon, here it is what, 12 years later. And I still see those books are hitting the top top of their categories still. I'm like, wow, they're in the top fifties. You know, even though you can't even buy the books anymore, it's [01:00:00] still there at all. But I was just burnt out and I just didn't want to write it more.
I still get calls my editors, my old editor and other editors call me up and say, Hey, you want to write a book? And I'm like, I'm just not there yet. And now at this stage of my life, I want to use my platform to promote other authors. So there's been a couple people who've come to me who wanted to write a book and I'm like, I'll show you what to do.
You want to talk to an editor? Hold on. I'll keep talking to this guy, you know, and next thing I know they get, they're getting a book deal in there. They're happy about that. So that's what I do now is expand on that.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay. So now when you sort of get into the family business, cause I know now you currently work for the family business.
When that happened.
Johnathan Lightfoot: My last corporate job, I was working at a startup and I was a vice-president about case development. So that was the highest I got. I got laid off because of financing issues. I think, I don't know what the problem I started my own business. Taskforce. And we're just doing, you know, high level [01:01:00] it strategy and planning, salting types of, and all I was doing that.
And then the, um, COVID hit and I had a pretty healthy client list. However, you know, when COVID hit the last calls I got were basically companies saying, Hey, how do we get our employees to work remotely? So I help them. And then the businesses kind of went away. So I was, I was floating if you will. I had some money saved up that I was able to live off of for several months.
And one day I got a call from my dad and he's he was running a company and he says, Hey, I'm tired. I want to retire. I would like you to come and run some. Yeah, well, no, initially it was ordered to cover one, a division are there. Okay. So I would, I got there and send me out. We do primarily government. So for the last 37 years, we've done different contracts for different agencies.
I like to tell people if there's a government agency that you can think of, I would say there's like a 90, 85 to 90% chance [01:02:00] Symbian has done work in there all the way up to including the white house. You know, we actually rewired the white house, um, installed, replaced their two pair of copper and the whole white house from the west wing to the oval office, to the residents, everything.
So we've been around. But when I got there, remember I used to do government contracting as a contractor, and I didn't really like it. You know, the RFP cycle is very long, you know, and you spend a lot of money and you're not guaranteed to win. It's just very slow. And our bill used to being in corporate where it's like, Hey, you know, just talk to the guy yesterday.
And here we are later and deal flows, this go kind of thing. So I wanted to bring B2B back to the. Because we had some B2B stuff we've done work with, um, SIC, Siemens, RJ Reynolds, and other companies at all, but we hadn't done it for 20 years. So I want to bring that back. And that's where I learned about CMMC the DOD cybersecurity maturity model [01:03:00] certification.
And, um, it's something that every company that does business with DOD has to get a certified, right. And that included us cause we have DOD tracks. And when I was reading it, I was like, there's a lot of work you gotta do to get this thing done. And I was like, talking to my dad. I was like, ah, I can do that.
You know, we can, we can do this because I understand that. But then I started thinking, I was like, but most small and medium sized business can't do that because this is a lot of technical stuff in the backend implementing it and also just understanding the regulations around it. So I had this bright idea.
We're going to offer services, to assist companies with getting CMMC certified. So I put together an entire business plan and, uh, just so happens when I did that. I was, um, I heard about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program. And I applied with that process, got accepted and went through the 10 KSB [01:04:00] program, which was, I call it MBA bootcamp.
So 12 weeks and they hit everything. And, um, it's tough because you're, you're looking at an additional two to three hours a day of work, you know, that you have to do while you're in the program, aside from your regular work you're doing once that happened, I, um, put together my business plan had the business year up.
My dad said, okay, make it work. And I started just refining it and then started. I didn't get very good traction initially, because it was all brand new. So I was doing a lot of educating people about the CMC program then saying, here's the value that symbiotic can give to you for that. And it's a lot of work and it's expensive, you know, to get it done.
But I did manage to code solutions that wasn't so expensive, right? So we have multiple tiers that are available, but again, it's, it is, it was, um, [01:05:00] it was like trying to sell, imagine trying to sell somebody the very first apple, they don't even know what an apple is. You got to explain the benefits and, you know, convince them and everything else.
So now, um, we're we got some traction. We have companies that are buying like right now, we're about to start up a brand new contractor down in Orlando, uh, next week, there's this company. So I'm very happy about that. Something that started off as a dream, um, the, see, it turned into a reality. It has been very powerful.
Jonaed Iqbal: Yeah, no, I mean, it's so interesting. And now you you've done so much now. I kind of want to ask you what were some mistakes you made along the way?
Johnathan Lightfoot: You know, the interesting thing about mistakes is I I'm a person that believes I'm, I'm fairly religious. I believe that we all have our path. And even though we may take something that we think is a mistake, it lends itself to the path, right?
So certain things that I would call a mistake now I was a bank. I said, well, you know, I learned something from that. If I hadn't made [01:06:00] that error, I wouldn't have learned that lesson. Right. And then I would have probably made an even bigger mistake later on down the road. But some things I wish I would have done differently, you know, I didn't go to college because it's a situation I didn't go to college.
And I do wish sometimes I did. There was a lot of times I had to learn from the school of hard knocks and it would've been nice to have known that theater. It would have been nice to have had that, you know, I've had to learn and work at the same time. It would have been nice to have been in, uh, you know, four years or however long, just all you gotta do is learn, oh, X I've always been a learner.
I like learning and all, but I don't think that's a mistake necessarily because I had to make my own routes. And, um, I've been very fortunate, you know, even though I don't have a college degree, I've given presentations at MIT to professors and other graduates of MIT at, on campus. Um, I was actually a college professor.
I taught college without a degree. And I think when I [01:07:00] speak, especially now I can relate where real time stories than just spewing. Stuff that, uh, that makes no sense. Not saying that if you go to college, don't make any sense if you do make sense at all. But, um, I also see it differently, you know, um, I don't have the restrictions of you can't do this because there's rules says this can't be done.
I still get excited about it T it, the same as I was when I was 11 years old, you know, now I was in the trenches doing the technical stuff and that I'm not, I don't want to do anymore. I'm done with that. Um, I do like where I'm at right now, where I get to talk to senior leadership, senior executives at companies and help them to know.
Here's the possibilities. Here's what needs to be done. Here's why it affects your business. And talk on that. I love developing solutions. Like what I was talking about with CMMC, you know, that's a problem, identified it. And then I [01:08:00] came up with a solution which turned into a service that I can market and I can sell, I guess I'm a very entrepreneurial in my spirit as it is already.
And this plays really well at this time of my life for me. Um, other mistakes, you know, I wish a lot of times I would've stayed in better contact with a lot of friends that I made along the way. There are a lot of people who I was very close to and now not so close. And some of them, I can't even tell you where they are right now.
But, um, I did, luckily that wasn't, that wasn't the rule. I have a lot of connections still that I'm still very active with. In fact, I had an issue the other day and I went on LinkedIn and went straight to the people I worked with and said, Hey, I need help in. You know, Tinto's down right there, you know, to help.
And that's what I would advise for especially younger people is the connections that you make, the networking that you make, be careful about burning any bridges, always make something. Cause you never know when something's going to come back around and [01:09:00]when you may need it again or when they make you.
Jonaed Iqbal: Okay. That's amazing. So you've done so much. What are your future goals now?
Johnathan Lightfoot: Okay. Up until semi I never had company loyalty to any company, never, uh, symbiotic is the first company that I have loyalty to. And that's because it's my family's business. My grandfather started it and I am third generation. So my whole goal now is to grow the business, but more importantly, to leave something, leave it behind for the next generation.
My daughter, my nieces and nephews that they have. You know, I got a leg up because my parents, my parents got a leg up because they're parents. So now me, it's my job to give that next generation of our family, that leg up. So they don't have to go through the same things and keep this legacy girl growing and going.
You know, there's something very empowering for me [01:10:00] to work at symbiotic because it's not just a job that this is hard work that started back in 1985 with my grandfather who just had an idea, you know, we've done, we've been through everything, you know, all the crisis that you could think of. And it'll be a black owned family business and be able to say we're 37 years old.
That to me is a big sense of pride for me. I do have a, not a bit. I have a very big ego about it. Yeah. I told the owner and, um, you know, my brother and my sister, my cousins there, they're going to be the board members. So we keep it all in the family. And we're all the same pot of, we got to keep this going to the next generation.
And so we're raising our, my daughter and my niece and nephews with understanding the family and understanding what this business is, so that when they get to gage of taking over the reins, that they, they take [01:11:00] it forward to.
Jonaed Iqbal: That's amazing. Thank you so much for your time. How would people
Johnathan Lightfoot: support you follow you?
I'm always available to people for advice, be it career, be a business, you know, like you and I were talking about earlier, you know, running a businesses, what happens after you, you get established right? Once you get your Inc or you get your formation documents done now, what you know, and I'm always open it to tell you my story or tell you my experiences.
The it world, you know, I can talk tech, but I just not technical anymore. SharePoint. I love it to death. Um, I, that, I've a big, long history with the, but even today, you know, I'm like, I don't, I don't keep up with it. You know, in fact, um, the other day I was, I started unsubscribing to all these SharePoint mailing lists.
I used to be a part of, because of Mike, it's just, I'm not in that world anymore, but you know, I can help people with it, strategy thinking around and things like that. And [01:12:00] I'll, but you know, I'm on Twitter as you well know, so people can reach me there easily. Don't be ashamed to drop into the DMS. My apologies if you don't get a response from me right away, because sometimes I just can't get to them.
Um, but if you're, if you work for a company and you're looking at wanting to improve your cyber security, you know, reach out to me too, you know, we have several solutions. Yeah. So thank
Jonaed Iqbal: you so much for your time, Jonathan. Man. I know you well compared to other people, but I learn so much more about your history.
I learned a lot, so cool. I'll catch you on Twitter spaces. I really appreciate you. And I know the listeners got a lot of value out of this,
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