Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino: VP of Strategy for Western Computer Greg Williams

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, it's great to meet you. I'd love our conversation with, looking at the calendar, it's the four-year anniversary of the pandemic. How did you survive that global pandemic, and how did it change you?

Greg Williams:
Well, couple things. One is I was in Costa Rica when it hit, and I stayed here for six months. That made it easier. I also have young kids. My kids were one and three at the time, and so you're not going out and doing things. You don't have a social life anyways, so it was a pretty decent time. They weren't school age yet, so you didn't have to worry about them going to school, so you just stayed home with your kids. That was easy to do during the pandemic. I think I really lucked out having where I was in my life at that point, that it didn't really affect me. I already worked from home, and I had no pressure to travel to visit customers, so I just spent more time with the family at home.

Joe Dimino:
So you're the VP of Strategy for Western Computer, but if I was to get to the heart and soul of what you did on a daily basis, 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?

Greg Williams:
I help businesses with the software programs that they need to run their business.

Joe Dimino:
Which is huge.

Greg Williams:
Yep.

Joe Dimino:
Very huge. I'm an IT guy by day and a technician in a large school district here.

Greg Williams:
That's right.

Joe Dimino:
The things that happen on the back end that people don't understand, the systems and software packages that are purchased that need to be run-

Greg Williams:
Yes.

Joe Dimino:
It's paramount to survive in the company.

Greg Williams:
We do the accounting and inventory control software, which everybody that goes into technology, they think they're going to be developing video games, or social media apps, or something really cool. But every business has to have accounting and inventory software, It's the first software they need, and it's the last software before they go out of business.

Joe Dimino:
And everybody wants a paycheck.

Greg Williams:
Exactly. Yeah. Everybody's got to get paid, and you got to pay the tax man, and you can't do that without our software.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah. Let me ask you this. What did you want to be in the third grade? What was your dream?

Greg Williams:
When I was in the third grade, I wanted to be a park ranger.

Joe Dimino:
Okay.

Greg Williams:
And then when I was older, I found out how much education it took and how little they made, and changed my mind.

Joe Dimino:
I always remember that comedy bit by Dennis Miller in the eighties during a stand-up. He used to always say, "Where the hell does a park ranger go to get away from it all?"

Greg Williams:
Right. That's true. Yeah. I love that.

Joe Dimino:
It was one of his best bits. Talk to me a little bit about where you were born and raised, and how these seeds of technology and running companies, how did all of this become who you are today?

Greg Williams:
Sure. I was born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan, in the heart of the automotive industry. My grandpa worked on the assembly line, and my dad did for a while before he got out of the factory. Everyone in my town worked for General Motors, it seemed like, and I did not want to do that. I was advised by my parents not to, to go do something different, which was great advice looking back. But I had two uncles that were AS-400 programmers, if you ever remember the old IBM AS-400s?

Joe Dimino:
Oh, yeah.

Greg Williams:
I had some exposure to it through them, and I knew that it was a good career and growing business, so I decided probably in early college that I wanted to go into the computer industry, but I didn't know much more than that. And then after I graduated from college, I got a job with a software company, and I've been in this business ever since.

Joe Dimino:
What platform do you prefer, Mac or Windows?

Greg Williams:
I prefer Windows. I've made my career off of Microsoft. They've been very good to me. I do use an iPhone instead of an Android phone, but I do prefer Windows. I cut my teeth on Windows 3.1, the first version of Windows. There was Windows for Workgroups before that, but way back when I was in junior high, when I saw Windows for the first time, I was like, "This is cool. This is a graphical user interface."

Joe Dimino:
I remember that. I remember going to Best Buy and getting my first Packard Bell, and it had 3.1 on it, and I was like, "This is like it came out of a spaceship."

Greg Williams:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Dimino:
You know? I remember in the late nineties, we had friends that lived in Seattle, and I was really into the grunge thing at the time. It was that era. I went to Redmond, Washington, and I actually went up to Microsoft to get a business card to send in a resume, and that was right on the cusp of '95 when everybody in the world wanted to be involved. But to be on that campus, to actually have a Microsoft business card, and to see all those people, it was like, "This is mecca." It was just the place. And then driving over the bridge and seeing where Bill Gates was putting his house in that rock on the side of the river there. It was pretty fascinating.

Greg Williams:
Yeah, it's really neat. I've been working with Microsoft software my whole career, and it's been very good to me.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, for sure. I have no doubt. Let me ask you this. Who's been a hero for you in your life, an inspiration?

Greg Williams:
Oh, there's been a few. From a sports perspective, I'm a huge Barry Sanders fan.

Joe Dimino:
Oh, he's so good, man.

Greg Williams:
Yeah. I grew up when he was in his prime, and we lived a few miles away from the Pontiac Silverdome and used to go to the games all the time. I've run into him a few times and got to meet him. He's probably my sports hero. From a business perspective, it used to be Bill Gates. I'm not as high on him as I used to be with some of the things that have happened. But I would say that from a sports idol perspective, it was definitely Barry Sanders and probably still is.

Joe Dimino:
Did you see the movie they made on him?

Greg Williams:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Dimino:
Oh, man, that was so good. I will never forget, because I wanted to get into sports broadcasting. I wanted to have a seat in Bristol, Connecticut, on the set of SportsCenter with-

Greg Williams:
Oh, that's cool.

Joe Dimino:
... Dan Patrick and all those cats. But I remember one time, they always had the Sunday night interview, and Barry was it one night. It was at the height of his powers, and I will never forget this segment. He said, "We need a week to totally rest our bodies, because when I'm done playing football, I feel like 12 cars hit me violently." He would talk about the bruising, and how hard it would be for him to heal, and how he would just be okay for next Sunday. But I always remember that. But seeing that special, he was at that game this year when the Lions were so close ... and I just don't like the 49ers. Obviously, I'm in Kansas City, and we ended up beating them, but I would've loved to have seen Detroit come in. As a Kansas Citian, I would've been all for Detroit beating us. A hundred percent.

Greg Williams:
Yeah, I think the whole country was rooting for Detroit. That was really sad they didn't quite make it. But, yeah, what happened back then is the AstroTurf in the Silverdome, which is thin turf laid over concrete. There was no padding.

Joe Dimino:
It's wild. And that on your body all the time. Are you kidding?

Greg Williams:
Yeah.

Joe Dimino:
Oh, man.

Greg Williams:
Yeah.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah. No way. No way. Let me ask you this. Current day, if you can meet anybody alive on the planet, who would it be? Who would you love to meet?

Greg Williams:
Oh, that's a great question. If I could meet anyone on the planet, I would love to meet Elon Musk.

Joe Dimino:
He's number one.

Greg Williams:
Yeah. I just read the book. Some of the things he does I don't agree with, but I see that he's got that weird neurological behavior and those tics. I would just love to see in person how he ... just observe him in person more than anything else.

Joe Dimino:
If Elon had some kind of hidden-camera-style thing where you could just watch his life, he would make so much money off of just that.

Greg Williams:
Oh, yes.

Joe Dimino:
So many people that would watch.

Greg Williams:
Yeah. Can you imagine? Yeah.

Joe Dimino:
If they had a live. Like the eagle's nest where the eagle's hatch, and just that kind of a thing. It would be amazing.

Greg Williams:
Right.

Joe Dimino:
Every day you wake up, what's your motivation to do what you do, to do the work you do to help your clients and to grow as a human?

Greg Williams:
That's a great question. It used to be more about, what can I achieve, what skills can I get, and how can I learn more than everybody else and be the expert and everything. Now it's transitioned to how do I enable the people on my team to succeed? When I see someone that I mentored, or trained a little bit, or helped them learn our business, and I see them be successful, and I get to share in that success, that's what motivates me now.

Joe Dimino:
So you clearly have to give good advice to your team. What's the best advice you've ever gotten?

Greg Williams:
The best advice I've ever gotten? It's probably that at some point in your career, your soft skills outweigh your technical skills, and to realize when you should hit that inflection point and start focusing more on those.

Joe Dimino:
Well said. That's so true. So true. Because I always think about, being in technology for as long as I've been, it's interesting. Because back in the nineties when I was learning this, I really got into technology because these companies didn't want to pay to have extra people, and they would just have you learn it. That was certification on the job.

Greg Williams:
Yes.

Joe Dimino:
You know what I'm saying?

Greg Williams:
Do you remember the old Saturday Night Live skits with the IT guy where he would stand behind people and say, "Move," and he would start doing it himself?

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, uh-huh.

Greg Williams:
He obviously never hit that inflection point to work on his soft skills.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, exactly.

Greg Williams:
I see that on people I work with. I see people with great technical skills that can't work with clients, and then you'd see someone with mediocre technical skills, but they're good at handholding, and everyone wants to work with them.

Joe Dimino:
See, I'm a Libra, so I try to find that line. Since I have to deal with teachers, my whole thing, and most of the population is female, is that they just need to feel comfortable with that something's going to get taken care of. Period. That's it.

Greg Williams:
Right.

Joe Dimino:
The only thing that has always gotten me ... I had a very efficient IT director when I got here ... that I was always blown away, because I came from corporate, how long it would take IT to respond to something. I am as responsive as I can be, even if it's to check in to say, "Hey, look, we're figuring it out. We're going to be there." I've never understood that in technology, because there was an issue. They need it taken care of. So it's interesting you bring up that interplay between technical and soft skill.

Greg Williams:
Yeah, it is very important. Also the trust. Trusting that something's going to get done.

Joe Dimino:
Yes.

Greg Williams:
Because if you have a large project with, let's say you have a thousand tasks, and there's two or three that don't get done, and there's an executive coming into a project status meeting and looking at that. He or she is going to assume that if there's two or three that aren't done, there's probably a bunch more that aren't done that just aren't being tracked.

Joe Dimino:
Right.

Greg Williams:
I learned a real important lesson in college there. I had a summer job painting houses, and we missed a spot on a window down at eye level. The homeowner came up and he's like, "You missed a spot there." He goes, "But I'm not going to pay you right now, because even if you take care of that, I can't climb a ladder up to the windows at the top of the house, and I assume you missed spots up there as well."

Joe Dimino:
Oh, wow.

Greg Williams:
And that was a lesson for me. Now, that was kind of hardcore, but it was a lesson for me of, hey, that's the way people think. A lot of people.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting in technology, because it's almost like there's a level of us that's like a doctor. When you come in, there's this almost God complex. Everybody's so excited and elated. There's a skill set that you have, and you're saving their day. But if you don't respond or something goes south, it's love or hate. It's like a late night talk show host. You either love them or you hate them. It's interesting.

Greg Williams:
Right. The other thing I've learned is important to be approachable. Obviously both us guys, Michigan and Kansas City, Midwest guys, we're probably better at that than a lot of people. But being approachable is important, because if you hype acronyms and tech talk, then you're never going to get anything done. So you have to kind of explain things without being insulting, and there's a balance there, too.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, there certainly is. So of all of these things that you've done and achieved in your life, what are you the proudest of?

Greg Williams:
I mean, I have to say I'm proudest of my family. My sons are four and six now, and having sons that are successfully growing up, adapting to school, and able to travel across different cultures and being raised in two cultures, I'm very proud of them for that.

Joe Dimino:
What do you like the best about living in Costa? Rica?

Greg Williams:
Well, the weather is very good compared to Michigan, where it's either super hot or super cold.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, that's right.

Greg Williams:
Right. Definitely the weather is great. But a slower pace of life is a great change for someone used to the hustle and bustle of Detroit, Michigan, for example. The biggest thing though, I have to say, is the lack of consumerism. You're not constantly looking for the next thing to buy. Things are expensive here and harder to find. There's no eCommerce. There's no Amazon dropping off on your doorstep the next day. You have to go, and there's not as many big stores, so you have to drive to a small, family-owned store, and maybe they have it, maybe they don't. And then you've got to go to the next one to try to find it.

Joe Dimino:
Wow.

Greg Williams:
That makes it harder to buy things, which, I think, is great.

Joe Dimino:
Yeah, that is. That lifestyle just sounds appealing. Everyone has a perception of you: family, friends, clients, colleagues. But you run the show. What's your perception of you? Who do you think you are?

Greg Williams:
I mean, I would say that I'm a hard-working, grounded, family man that values the relationships of those that he works with. That's what I would say about myself.

Joe Dimino:
Greg, if anyone wants to learn more about you, reach out, anything about your world and business, where do they go?

Greg Williams:
The best thing to maybe connect with me on LinkedIn. Just look for Greg Williams at Western Computer on LinkedIn if you want to want to connect with me personally. If you want to learn more about our company, just go to our website, WesternComputer.com. We have tons of videos out there talking about what we do and how we work, and you can ask for more information there.

Joe Dimino:
Excellent. Greg, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for having an open talk about it.

Greg Williams:
Thank you, Joe.

Joe Dimino:
Send my love to Costa Rica, man.

Greg Williams:
All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.