Famous Interviews: Cloud Transformation Executive at Western Computer Ryan Pollyniak


Joe:

Welcome to a new edition of the Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino. On this episode, we talk with cloud transformation executive at Western Computer, Ryan Pollyniak. He is a seasoned sales professional with a rich background in Microsoft Dynamics spaces. He's passionate about the future of AI, the cloud, and upgrading from legacy systems. He has worked closely with the executive teams of mid-sized businesses in a variety of industries to make them feel valued throughout the entire sales cycle. Before joining Western Computer in 2015, he spent significant time as an ISV in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem, working closely with partners to sell their products. We get into all of this and so much more. Enjoy.

Well, hey man, it's great to meet you. Before we get into your work in technology, I want to know first and foremost, four years ago in April, we were wrapping our head around this pandemic and now we're out of it. How did you survive the pandemic and how did it change you?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Yeah, absolutely. I remember I was in Dallas down at Microsoft in Dallas and visiting some clients in that area and sitting there having dinner and all of a sudden, I hear the NBA is shutting it down for the entire season. And that's when it really hit me that this billion-dollar industry is shutting it down and maybe I ought to go home. And there I was at home for quite a while after that, it was March of 2020. And our company, it was quite remote already, so it didn't particularly affect our operations very much other than not getting on board or not getting on-site as much as we were used to. And it helped our company shift even more towards remote implementations and refining those processes. And coming out of the pandemic, we probably travel on-site less now, and I think that's the case for a lot of companies.

How did I get through it? I had three little girls and we made up games in the backyard and I focused a lot on work, I focused on family, and before you know it, the clouds cleared and here we are. So, it was certainly transformational from an industry perspective. I watched our clients go from, some of them 90% brick-and-mortar channel sales, and now they're 90% e-commerce. And literally, that shift happened as a direct result of the pandemic, and we helped some of those clients do that. So, the ripple effects of that whole time, man, I don't think that anybody fully understands and still to this day, but tremendously impactful in the technology space.

Joe:

So, speaking of what you do with technology, I'm going to put you in front of a bunch of third graders at career day and one of the kids says, hey, what do you do for a living? How do you answer that child?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Yeah, that's a great question. And so normally I'll point to my wife and I'll say, ask her and then she'll gloss over because she can't explain it. But we help businesses run their companies and keep track of all of their information. My kids ask me this, I have three little kids, 6, 8, and 10. So they ask me these questions all the time and I'll give them examples, hey, when you go to the store and buy something, they had to buy that from someone and that had to come from a warehouse somewhere and somebody had to make it. We help the companies that make it make those items, we help the companies ship them to the grocery store to ship those items, and sometimes we'll help the grocery store sell those items. And it's difficult, ERP and technology and CRM and big data and AI for the kids to understand some of this stuff, but I think it resonates a little bit to answer that for them.

Joe:

So, what did you want to be in the third grade? What was your dream?

Ryan Pollyniak:

I wanted to be in the ERP space. That's always what I've dreamed of. No, I'm kidding, Joe. But I do love it. I do love it. I was pretty sure that I was going to be a pro baseball player and considering I didn't even make the high school team that dream fizzled out at a young age, but an astronaut. And then in high school, I was going on the science path. I'm a big science guru and I wanted to be in genetics and ended up going the business route when I got to the University of Georgia where I went to school and loved it ever since. I'm enamored with business process and helping companies improve that.

Joe:

So, take me back to your childhood. Where were you born and raised and what were these seeds of technology? How did these get into you?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Yeah, great question. So, I was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, but I only lived there until I was five. My dad transferred town to the Atlanta, Georgia area in 1984, and I've been here really ever since. Grew up in Marietta, Georgia, went to the University of Georgia now raising a family in Alpharetta in the suburbs. So, from the time I was 5 till now, 40 years later here I still am. The technology piece of it, I went to business school and learned the nuts and bolts of accounting and finance and all these various areas of business and got a minor in Spanish. And I went to work for ADP coming out of college, which is kind of where my technology career began because I didn't go to school for any of it. And nor am I a techie, I am more strategy and business process and helping companies navigate these questions.

And so working for ADP, I started to realize everything that went into their ERP side of their business, it wasn't the payroll side of their business, they've since spun that off. But went for three months to Schaumburg, Illinois for an intensive training, starting with this is a server, which I already knew that. But going from there through all the various elements of, at that time, networking and hosting. And this was early 2000, so we didn't have true software as a service just yet, but we had the ASP stuff. And that was a crash course for me. And it really opened my eyes to what level businesses had to rely on technology in order to run their business effectively and to keep the doors open. And not just to keep the doors open, but to grow and to prosper, whether that's counting the dollars on the financial side or retaining customers on the CRM side, or anything in between. And so that was my crash course that ADP training up in Illinois.

Joe:

So talk to me a little bit about who's been inspirational, who's been a hero for you in your life?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Man, well, got to start with my dad. He made it happen. Hard-working guy, carried sales bag and... Well, came up as a pharmacist and got into pharmaceutical sales and sales management. So, he was gone quite a bit, but also great dad. Every spare moment he had was devoted to us as kids his whole life. And that's how I try to model my life. I'm a hard worker and I'm also very dedicated to my three little girls. That's where I spend all my free time and I couldn't love it anymore. Some great leaders along the way in terms of some of the people that I've worked for. At my current job, the founder of the company is one of the greatest guys you'll ever meet, and kind of taught me that it's not all about pinching every last penny, it's about taking care of customers and taking care of employees, which go hand in hand.

I mean, if you find a company that takes care of their own employees, they'll take care of their customers and vice versa. And you don't typically find a company that does one but not the other. And he not only really instilled that in me but walked the walk. And working where I am now for the last 10 years has helped take me to that next step of how I want a company culture to be. It's not just dollars, it's about people. And that's important to me.

Joe:

So if you can meet one person alive on the planet right now that you find interesting or fascinating, who would that be? Who would you love to meet and talk to?

Ryan Pollyniak:

I'd love to meet Satya Nadella, and he's the CEO of Microsoft, simply because the guy transformed the organization when he came in. I mean, it was a little bit of a dinosaur at the time technologically, and he came in and was very forward-thinking and shifted quite a bit. I'd pick Elon Musk's brain. I mean, no question about that. Super interesting guy. Any kind of AI conversations with him, and if you watch some of his interviews, a bit eccentric of course, but I think he'd be an interesting guy to sit down with and talk with as well. Those are probably two of the guys that would be higher on my list.

Joe:

So talk to me a little bit about what your inspiration is every day to get up to do the work that you do, to evolve not only as a professional but as a human. What is that for you?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Yeah. I mean, number one is being a dad. And everybody I've ever worked for and really anybody I've ever interacted with since I had kids, I let them know, look, that's my priority guys and everything else kind of falls in line. Now don't get me wrong, hard worker, and everything I do from a professional standpoint is for them. So they're the ones, right? You wake up in the morning, they're looking at you, "Hey, you brought me into this world, I'm still trying to figure out what's going on, what's next?" And they're relying on you. And very similarly and not quite as in an existential way, but very similarly, our clients depend on us. These people are putting their livelihoods on the line, trusting a company to come in and transform their business and do a good job and not have the project go off the rails.

And I take that very seriously. Because man, anybody that puts their trust in me, the last thing I want to do is to let them down. And it goes back to that human component and understanding, hey, the person that you're interacting with, the person that you're doing a project for, that you are signing a contract with, they have people to answer to, they have kids at home that are looking up to them and they have careers that they want to advance as well, and we're all in this together. So yeah, my kids and my clients, that's what I do it for every day. Of course, my wonderful wife as well is part of that.

Joe:

So professionally speaking, what are you the proudest of? What's the one thing that you've done that you're the proudest of?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Professionally speaking, what am I proudest of? Without saying any names of companies, helping companies through the pandemic and make those transitions that I mentioned earlier. We had people panicking. It was the end of the world for some companies, and it depended on the industry. We saw some go gangbusters and others, they had to transform completely. That was huge. We've helped companies through ransomware attacks and unable to ship, unable to invoice, unable to pay their vendors. And again, you go back to that human component of it. These aren't just customers, these are real people with real problems and they're going home and they're up at night over this stuff. So helping businesses through tough times, and those are two good examples, ransomware, pandemic, that's what it's all about. And of course, in the good times, you want to help people grow and you want to help people prosper, and you want to help people have their own success. So that's the way I look at my role.

Joe:

So you had mentioned being a baseball player. Let's say we get off this call, time machine pulls up in front of your house, you can go anywhere in the history of baseball and sport and see one game. Where are you going to go?

Ryan Pollyniak:

I would probably go back, not as far as you might think, probably back to 1995 in Atlanta when the Braves beat the Indians for the World Series because I was a big Braves fan at the time, but I was working when it happened at the movie theater and I missed the game. I was cleaning up popcorn off the floor, I think. And so I'd go back and I'd be at that game. I think that was, for me, probably as good as it gets. Now, you could probably go back and see some historical figures, the Babe Ruths of the world, maybe Hank Aaron's 755th home run. That was quite a moment. Again, Atlanta type deal, but a couple come to mind.

Joe:

So at the end of the day, everyone has a perception of you, Ryan, your family, friends, clients, colleagues, but you run the show. What's your perception of you? Who do you think you are?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Man, I think I'm a hard worker. I think I'm a dedicated dad. I think that I'm constantly trying to stay on that front edge of learning more. And in the tech industry, that's a tall order. The way things are changing now with AI, for instance, man, I mean, you got to keep up by the day. Things are shifting and the future is kind of... Nobody could tell you exactly what's going to happen. So I'm a constant self-improver in that manner and trying to keep up with the latest and greatest so that I can help people digest what's coming down the track and help people understand the latest and greatest while they've got businesses to run. It's my job to kind of translate the rest of it for them.

Joe:

So if anyone wants to reach out, learn more about you, anything about your world, the good business, where do they go?

Ryan Pollyniak:

Yeah, sure. So I'm on LinkedIn. You can find Ryan Pollyniak on LinkedIn, MSDYNSolutions is the URL. And so that's a good place. Western Computer is our company, so westerncomputer.com. It's a good chance if you go on there, if I'm logged into the back-end chat, that I'll pop up and we can have a talk actually, because I do stay on there quite a bit. I love engaging with people on the website. You'd be amazed. And yes, I know what everyone's thinking. Yes, that first pop-up. Is it bot? Hi, how are you doing? Can I help you with anything? But the moment you type something in there, it's a live person. And if it's my face and name there, it's going to be me. We've done massive transformational projects that started with a website chat. I love talking to people, understanding what they need. And so those are good ways. Westerncomputer.com, come find me on LinkedIn. Glad to have a chat.

Joe:

Yes, sir. Ryan, this has been wonderful. Thank you, sir, for your story. Thank you for your time. Best of luck with everything.

Ryan Pollyniak:

Hey, thanks, Joe. Pleasure to be on.

Joe:

Thanks for tuning into another Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino, where we cover the world of art, literature, business, spirituality, music, and more from around the globe. Our esteemed theme music was composed and produced by the great E. E. Pointer of Kansas City's River Cow Orchestra. If you want to hear more interviews, visit the Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino channel on YouTube. You can also find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and until next time.