Investments Unlimited Book – John Willis and Bill Bensing

This is texturing TV. Hi, welcome, you know, this is a really special conversation. I don't know if I call an interview I'm getting to do today with the couple colleagues friends talking about a very very cool topic but talking about a book that was recently published.

I'm joined today by John Willis and Bill BC. Sorry about been seeing I'll get I'll get through it here. I'm stumbling no buildings and who are authors of Investments unlimited so we're going to talk about this very cool book and some of the Fantastic things in it.

So welcome guys. Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Thank you and and having the stones in the background is a big man. Oh, it's okay. Always well if you would if you maybe Bill if you would start just give us a brief introduction of yourself John you do the same.

Yeah. So yeah, of course, you'll been seeing yeah, really? I just caught about some drivers like we talk about some of the governance and passion.

My background is Shadow it everybody likes to bash on Shadow item. I actually say shadow. It is good.

If you have it say it shows a disconnect between your customer and what you deliver and sort of a lot of my my career has been aligning Shadow it which people were for this business it alignment. So how do you let the people who have maybe who are with customers are facing problems have the ability to write software builds off or whatever. It may be in such a Constraints and confines the organization can use it and so people always say security compliance as if there are ways to stop people and so a lot of my career has been spent around like how can actually you help bring the organization together with these individuals who experience the problems or can solve the problems but may not have the depth of technical expertise.

And so that was actually through Investments and limited that was a bit of a a mindset. I had in the back of my mind as well. So that's been out of the bag for a long time Shadow it for my perspective is need an opportunity.

So go for it go. Yeah. No, it's funny.

You know, we always think about China ID. I'm John Willow. So I'll take my background like I don't think I've ever heard you explain it that way.

I love it because we always the connotation on it is a negative thing, but he is a forcing function to get something done. That's not getting done for improvement. Right?

So, yeah. No, it's a great way to think about it. Yeah.

I'm John well some a big friend of tech strong obviously friend of Mitch and and Everybody over there and yeah, we thought it would be just fun to to do this and you know, it's my background just in the devops and most people sort of can track me down and figure it out. But I was this idea that Oakley turned into this book that my collaboration with Bill over the years. Now.

I was lucky enough to meet him really started with a conversation of me and teleport pal, you know, probably getting close to four you maybe five years now. I don't know time get the covid warp, right but the in years, but you know, we were having these conversations about how terrible it was in large organizations for internal audit and the toilet and the efficacy and and that turned into a 2019. Reference architecture paper that we wrote Frontier Evolution and then I wanted to come back and do a read, you know a version two, and I'd been working with Bill and Bill Scott tremendous, you know you it's been a little shy because he's done like he's implemented some of the biggest Department of Defense.

Deaf Secaucus reference architectures done in the world, you know, so but the point was I got to work with Bill I invited bill on the book. We saw started out as a paper. We try to make it a book and then it Revolution loved the idea so much they'll tell you what if you eat more months do anything.

He wants maybe a year if the team wants to turn into a book and that's what we did. We turned it into a book and now it's sort of a best seller and it's It's a phoenix project for security if you will, so yeah, looking forward to the movie Next if progression, you know it did and in the in the I think in the introduction in the back you talk about that how they started as a technical paper a reference architecture ended up being, you know, kind of a full novel. Well, let's let's do this because I want to have this conversation kind of a couple parts first.

Let's talk about the story and you know, we don't want to give away all the Deets right save some for later for for reading the story and it's a very approachable a book that way. I mean, you know reading about compliance. That's what everybody wants to do on their side.

Yeah, right. So it's a very approachable way to talk about the topic and very relatable and then we can talk about some of the things that are in the book that I think are and just equally as valuable and fascinating to me that you did it this way. So whoever wants to kind of give us a start and the story I'll do it real quick one, but I actually want to hear bills.

So the longer version is but I mean one of these when we were sitting down and we were going to do it as a second version of the reference architecture. It's kind of funny the way you did. This works is Gene invites about 40 or 50 of us to Portland every year the last couple years have been virtual but we break out in the groups and we work on papers and this over 100 papers out there now and I see Evolution all Creative Commons and and at this first day readout I might have this little skirt.

My memories Gamers we were doing our readout and we're listening to everybody else's readout and they were all inch more interesting and I just seen so boring. So we regrouped the next morning and we said like let's not make you know, the 2019 reference architecture was just playing and I don't fascinating but it was boring as heck. And you know, I you know, you get into this like who said what?

Oh, he said. No I said I I feel like I I knew the gold ratney and sort of Trope if you will like that. Is it Go rat route this book where he had to you know, that this story of this the sort of the Jonah and And and Jonah and oh now, I can't remember Alex Alex and Jonah and Jean rewrote that in a modern-day version with Bill and Eric and and I thought man, why don't we just do it as sort of that?

Phoenix project going so we I mean it, you know, we didn't Gene had a lot of time like he literally studied that pattern for years took her class on the air constraints, but so he didn't have that kind of time but we to the extent that we tried to build that kind of story that we knew it was successful of the sort of the the one person who is it's core chronic conflict. That's the that is basically all these books have these core chronic conflicts and it's usually two characters that try to sort it out. So that was sort of my contribution to get the ball rolling but then what like just sort of steamroll is people like Bill and John rosatasky and Jason Cox and Disney and and you know Topo pal which was a Capital One like like open the door and say let's do this gold ratty and sort of framework and then like go guys and then you know, and these guys had like incredible stories and experience and and You know like big scale architecture design.

For people who wanted to build reference architectures for Steph segoffs. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It was yeah, it's pretty natural as they came out. Everybody's pretty excited to talk. And I think that was interesting.

I remember some questions were like, you know, how was it happening nine authors? Yeah. It actually it really wasn't that bad is jealous talking to everybody had the stories and the stories fit into place.

And so I think the like in the back of the book you we have all those those the epilogue where a lot of that was I say Cutting Room floor is really important material that we didn't want to leave out. Yeah the same point in time. It's we could we could have spent 10 years building a story and building a whole, you know, just a big thing and you know getting it to Market.

I mean our initial paper, I remember our initial paper and the feedback we got from it was okay the concepts good, but we really need to work on narrative. So yeah, you know, the the collaboration is good or not based on if you're Still friends with you at the end of the book. Yeah, they're still talking to you and one of you're still talking to them actually.

Yeah. Yes and vice versa. That's right.

I'd say what tell us a little bit about the story kind of get us into you know started out tell us a little bit about you know, Susan honestly's as the CEO is getting the the emergency is created. Right? We've got something core product conflict right like that.

I mean like you said g spent, you know, like years trying to cry. In fact, I did an audiobook with Jean called beyond the Phoenix project which are good by the way all rights beyond the goal and I interviewed him about the book and his friend and he said that in the Phoenix project. They literally tried to hit the same page number.

With there's a core chronic conflict and it aids on a particular page in the goal and jeans, you know goal excuse the pun was to basically have the same page number being the the sort of the breakout point for clearly had defined now, we didn't have the time to do that. But but there was that the core chronic conflict which is based on their you know, the CEO getting You know getting a sort of a tip. Apparently the people who work for banks.

This is beautiful too guys, like, you know Topo and John and had like like they knew that how Banks worked and so apparently the OCC will sort of give somebody maybe a CEO of Bank that you're going to get a really severe we can talk about the acronyms Indianapolis later. But and and the one thing I was fantastic which was you know, we see all the time which was the CEOs like wait a minute because the other thing we tried to model the company off of like a company had been speaking at devops Enterprise. It was like, oh man.

I wish he was good as they were and then all of a sudden the CEOs, like wait, I know we don't know about yeah and I get this thing from the OCC about Mr. I am getting here and like government I'm here to help you're sure what we didn't do, right? Yeah.

I mean it's interesting the story because you think about it when you're you're talking about security and compliance especially in software. You have a lot of people with different backgrounds Technical and not Technical and at the end of the day and I like to say this like they're all Geeks in their own right? You've got the tech Geeks but you have the security compliance Geeks and when you have experts trying to talk to other experts across domains, that's where you're that's where you're rub is and you riding the books some of the challenging, you know, like the sort of like the first chapter or first second chapter explaining the concept of an MRI or an MRA to a child because I wrote the book.

It's how can you explain this these Concepts so the technical or non-technical to the average reader because we wanted everybody to be able to read this from all sides of all the stakeholders and understand it and get it and sort of point to it as a single narrative. So that was that was fun. And I think writing, you know sort of thing that chapter around, you know, right talking to the kids and trying to explain it to get like whoever is really gonna explain an MRI to a kid probably not really Should CEO of yeah Investment Bank exactly right by the way, that's what we're talking about Investments unlimited.

You know, let me I'm taking a guess. It may be a flyer but in the pretty early in the book Susan the CEO creates a new position. She put somebody in the chief risk and compliance.

Role, right and that's sort of to me was a sign of oh, you know. We thought we were doing this but maybe not right. She's like I need somebody to so go after this figure out what's going on.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's key. So part of the book is you look at that like Risk and it risk as a first class citizen the book goes through it. It shows people working together to get towards this better outcome and his job was saying like you could have great a great a great devops practice between your development operations, but if you get security compliance and audit, especially in the highly regulated you skip that a lot of individuals critical in your software delivery life site.

So hitting the hitting those is key and like having a chief for us or you're seeing this with the the EU door regulation where they call it information communication technology ICT, just like to warn people in this creative people here door the first time he started explaining door. I went to look at the report. I'm like that's not there.

So it's explaining what door is. It's not the yeah the gene Kim or the yeah. Yeah.

No, not the not not the devops not the door metrics meantime around at the four-door metrics, but yours Legislation and I'm right now I don't know I can't pull the acronym stops my head. Yeah, but it's irregulation coming around and a lot of it's just stemmed from issues in the financial system in Europe where banks have been unable to do business for many reasons that are we as a result of bad it hygiene at the end of the day changes to a system that didn't allow people to make pull get paid for a week across different a different countries. And so the EU is coming together, they build the door and in there and getting back the chief risk officer.

They've basically said it risk cannot be considered part of just general operational risk anymore because of howling grain information and communication technology is into that just how we do business put our customers lives and the fact that we can really upset somebody like not getting a paycheck. That's there's a big economic disadvantage when things like when bad things happen in that area that we need to have a specific focus and when you talk when About the chief risk officer. That's the admission that you need to focus and have this concept around it risk.

It's not just security dude scans or is a very clear. There's very clear set of tactics and also strategy for this such that you know in the regulated Industries, you're not you're not unfairly an adversy affecting anybody. Oh, I think too.

I mean I do look up the acronym against remembrance digital operational digital operational resilience. Okay, that's right. I mean, it's it's sort of one embodiment of it isn't just back office operational right?

It's part of the whole company digital strategy, you know, it is everything it's in everything and any one part of it could fail because of you know, you talk about this too that I think that's I think it's forward thinking, you know, we think about a lot of the resilient stuff that a lot of other people are doing in our safety critical systems adaptive capacity John Osborne's Dr. Cook recipes, but but yeah, but to have the sort of resilience be part of that academic is it's telling how it gives you sort of indication and I think the to the book, although we don't cover sort of the resilience science or but but it is telling that they're you can see where all this going. And I think that was the book was like I always say this, I mean me and Bill had been sort of geeking out about what is wrong with the iiaad the internal Auditors Association three lines of Defense, right like for a while we've used that on a lot of ways and and the one thing I like to tell people like make one thing clear like if you think everything I I'm talking about a bunch of baloney remember this it sack is not it risk.

And we have not stopped. That book is a clear indication. Like we could write a follow-up book and call, you know, basically say they were doing devsecops today was great and they still get to know CC MRI, right?

And then wait a minute. Now you did that. In fact, that's what's happening in Industry right now people doing that Ops the same.

Oh you forgot story now, they're doing that second house and they're still getting severe enforcement actions from the OCC and the FDIC and I'm sure that there's Susan's out there going wait a minute. We got this when we had devops we got this one ahead. That was checkouts and like oh, well, you know we still don't talk the second line and third line.

Yeah. And that's risk. So I was like it SEC or devsecott is not it risk.

And if you're not solving that so I called the last Last Mile problem. Then you're still you know, you're still in this toil and you're still you know, protecting the organization the way you think you are. Well, I don't want to give away too much in the book recall the I mean they basically had to decompose the the devops pipeline workflow.

Right and rebuild it building in that sort of the risk steps. I guess if you want to call that you have a better term for it. I'm sure than I do.

But so you kind of have to you can't just bolt it on. Let's have developers talk to security people and know how to have sex ops right through ridiculous definition, but a lot of times that's how it's interpreted. It is security and compliance.

And that's what those missing here clearly like you're pointing out. It's missing a lot of organizations. What do you what as you wrote the book?

I'm curious. You know a lot of times when you put things to paper minded on you've written a ton of things and some very valuable things, you know, at least when I write things I learned because I have to sort of put it all together and make sense of it be able to explain it in writing this book for both of you what we're some of the things that you came out understanding better than you win in. Software build materials.

Okay, that's a good one. As we were riding said the opportunity to it there ever. Actually a lot of people they there's a lot of content a lot of his road.

I remember our editor Leah. She said, you know just keep writing. Don't not write things stuff.

Right stuff. Mary might remember sitting at a bill took that the heart. Like all right.

Yeah, we wrote the s bomb chapter long for shell and log for Jerry. Yeah, right that actually because that was over the Christmas that was close to Christmas time frame and I took two weeks off during Christmas to do a lot of writing in the book and name is a 2021 and 2022 and I remember is happening because a lot of us we actually had a set of pin down for a while because we had to go deal with our own organizations in this issue. And so we as that happened we're just like we got to write about the softball building material so that you know that just a couple we would have weekly meetings right and catch up to stand up and what you had the guy who ran Fidelity the guy around PNC the guy like all these people like yeah, we're not gonna make it for the next year.

We won't be here. That was classic. The one thing.

Yeah, I want to do that. Like we talk about learning through us as you read through that chapter. I was actually at that point in time trying to work on an estim.

Solution because people been talking about it. So the ones that come out but like you create them but then you have to manage them and and digest them and use them and so as you talk about learning actually use that chapter as a way to sort of write in prose some architectural Concepts that I was looking at how I was an approach it so and talking to other people so that gave me now I'm you know, I now I'm very into the is it to the s-bomb problem and looking at it from different angles such that I'll make arguments that s bombs aren't required in certain places. And so but I will go to that here but as you're going to do that, that was my yeah my learning and going to like forgotten about how that was.

It was just we were all like because there's another great one too, which for me which was much of a learning. I mean, all of it was learning to have you know, we had one Bank talk about how MRI, you know, we can big deal another bad cold. No, no, we're gonna MRI.

So just to see that like how people dealt with the OCC. And you know what it meant and like that that and that you could write a book on the different cultures there but one of the things I love which was we made this narrative up, right we took because it wasn't really like any of the banks of real book. It was an investment Bank.

It was no very small for you know, sort of asset Holdings like 20 billion. 56 trillion assets. Oh, yeah, so and and almost all the authors that were for banks well over our billion, right the so we we wanted a smaller company because there was some interesting ways to tell a story in a small company.

But we made this thing up, right we made up a story that they had about 15 MRIs open for like a year. and then they get from the OCC and mria which every Bank was again that one, you know one at opinion that I raise and the other one had a strong opinion, but it was no dispute when you got when ocg called you about a matter of recording immediate that I and so so we we were talking to this your your Asian bank and I won't go into the details and they just happen to stumble into them. So somebody new somebody who knows somebody.

And and and the the this information is public. So basically the story was that this Bank Asian bank that was doing business in the US which was under the so jurisdiction of the OCC. Had about 18 Open MRIs for over a year.

Ignore them got an mria ignored apparently in order to MRI and they got to see some assistance from the Ocean City. So like today I was like, oh my God, we made this story up. And and all the sudden like as we're sort of three quarters around the road trying to mature the story, but we find a story that is identical.

And and just not much big asset Holdings, you know because it was again a not a monster Asian bank, but an Asian bank that was had it division which was owned bank its own asset Holdings in the US so it's like oh my God. We created a fictional story. That actually is a true story.

It's almost like for folks in all the acronyms MRI is a matter requiring attention and mria is mad at requiring immediate attention. That's the two by four moment. Right?

It's you know from that was a learned. I learned a lot about that process and then learned about like how do OCC and FDIC. I mean, I spend a lot of time we'll talk about our the startup me and Bill work for right now costly, but what near the end but you know, I'm spending a lot of time trying to understand these severe enforcement actions and all the like what these why well certainly in the banking industry, but like another Industries, you know, what does it mean to be, you know restricted in business to to get these massive finds so that just learning about matters retirement attention, which you're really like finding that you're doing something that is not in sync with the OCC.

And a matter of trying to Media attention typically is you really didn't follow up and we've given enough time so we're really gonna yeah and warning and and if you if you don't deal with that one then apparently it gets pretty serious. Mmm. Interesting any other things that you walked away from kind of learning they're like you and expect to come come away with this perspective.

Well, actually we were talking about three lines of defense and John I would geek doing this when we wrote In the book and I love that perspective. So when it comes to sort of like Risk Management and Frameworks, let's just admit it like it's so it's deep it's dense. It's the most boring of stuff except for the people who love it the three lines defense model from the IIA The Institute of internal Auditors.

It's very simple and what I love about it for any organization, that's saying okay. How do we better our risk management posture? You could borrow that so like the first line?

Ah, yes. You got it, right? Yeah.

Okay and what I love about it is they in this this most recent revision of it they talk about They talk about cooperation amongst the three lines that used to be sort of like interpreters very rigid and now I talk about a cooperative and so I love that model because as you think like from the first sign, which is you people Hands-On Keys, they're basically saying what they're going to do. The second mine is validating that they that the people that said they're gonna do they actually do it and then the third lines looking at the full system broadly speaking in general not the technology people risk management and you think what's for those three personas different people fit in those some of them cross wanted to but it gives you the ability to start rationalizing and thinking from a broader not just specific technical Hands-On concept on how to do this. And I thought that was a big Learning lesson for me.

I found that to be a very powerful model. It's very simple. It's easy to understand easy to consume, um and models how these mostly Banks any and really, you know High consequence or you know organizations and I agree.

We just, you know, it comes a simple way. To you know, the thing about like devops, right? They're just putting those six characters together became this incredibly simple way.

To create incredible change and all Industries over the last 10 or 15 years, right? It's a little over 10. I think that to Bill's point one of the things I think me and Bill really rocked on the Ia you know, the alliance defense was Is it was a simple way to show what is broken?

And remember I said earlier says one takeaway that its SEC is not it risk and it sex is still hovers really around the first line. It is the second line that basically is the you know risk where risk starts and that's where you get into audit. And and to me it it's very sort of like there's the other thing I thought was interesting too is early on in the devops sort of Journey, you know, there was you know, there was a book that a couple of us did I wasn't one of the core authors, but it was called it audit.

Devops and security and unlikely, you know, whatever it was some variation in that and really what the the story was. Jean was very important in this Narrative of trying to tell everybody that that segregation of Duties devops. Does this it like nothing changes?

You still have separation of Duties. But but if you do it this way versus that way you can use devops in the Automation and in the book. I think it was Bill or maybe Bill and me because we went two geeks on Felines and events.

There's a question that starts asking like, oh, wait a minute. What about three lines of defense and I thought we did a good job. I sort of using that same like no.

No, you can still have to realize events. You just think about how you do it differently and set a Gates just like, you know, sort of a piss ideas or sugar duties. The old school is they were gays the new school is nothing changed.

It's just an automated fraction and I I thought we I thought, you know Pat myself on a bad cut bill on the back. I know we did a really good job of like expressing that very very similar to the sort of side. No Saga, if you will that I think you know that became part of the the devops conversation.

Didn't make sense. It does it does and it's interesting. So to even even I think it was Michelle that like picks up the the book or the diagram and you know starts talking about it.

By the way page 63 folks. Yeah jump right to that. Okay, hint cheat here.

Well, so let's do this because I actually think there's Two books in this there's the novel there's the story and though it's a much less in terms of page count. There is an excellent reference in the back of the book. I think it's where you had the chance to say if you didn't get it from the story or if we weren't able to wrap it into the story.

There's some extremely valuable information if you want. If you wanted to like read the novel and read ahead to the answers in the back of the book and next one, you know, we're in it talks about Mraz and mrias talks about pipeline design with controls and toll Gates talks about deaf SEC Ops Talks about what things are in the book what things aren't talks about shift left. You know in and these are you know, a couple Pages page a couple Pages software decomposition analysis Etc.

So why did you put that? Why did you add that to the book? And those are all important Concepts like yeah at one point in time.

We had a stop writing the book and go to market and so as we have the stuff like we'll call The Cutting floor, but it wasn't stuff. He didn't want to throw we didn't want to throw away is very important it like it's like shift left. I'm a Dev SEC Ops a lot of people use these terms and I'll just say it out loud.

A lot of people don't use them properly. And then what's the proper way to use it? Yeah.

No, that's a really good point because that I've done a paper with the company called that a group called The you know, open network User Group. They were very responsible for a lot of work in sdn sd-wan and they had asked me after we've done the 2019 deaf Secaucus. Could I help them work on a paper for cloud?

Now it went little different it was about Sim and sore and all that but one of the things I thought was really really important in the beginning that book was we were going to be referencing like Network terms and that you really like the thing about like all the terminology in our industry. It's terrible. We're terrible it overloading these terms and I think you know, one of the things I thought about was as we were doing this like if we're going to use a word even like devsecops, so we're gonna You know goal of educating you but more importantly this is what we mean in this book when we're referencing to devsecops.

So if you like you have a different opinion, does it matter when we were using this context it was that so a lot of that was sort of sort of say, you know, we're gonna use some terms and then it like we did that early on but then it got moves to the back, but but it was really sort of a goal of like like this is our definition of this term. And so when you see used, you know, whether you agree or not, we'll least comprehend what we were saying, so Excellent. Well, the the only thing that I found I don't say lacking or missing the only thing I found in the book, I was hoping to see was maybe that pipeline done in a Tolkien style map, you know something really cool.

There. Were you and we were riding this car and that would be good. You can do that in the graphic novel version.

Right? The goals got it. Got its own graphic novel version of it.

Well, you know there there's some very cool stuff in the back. And again it's only a page, you know, two on each topic. It's it's kind of a reference.

Yeah, but a good place to go if you're like, I'm not quite sure. I know what you know control gates are in a devops pipeline design. Okay, great.

I get it. Then you can as you're reading the book you're like, okay because there were a few times and when I realize that was back there I went back and read it and like okay now I know like that's what I'm your meaning that we wanted to make sure that like Like I didn't want like we didn't want you to go Google the phrase and then like, whoa, there's some guys from my desk. I was you know, you know some ridiculous explanation and then you know it you need to understand what we thought it was.

Very cool. Well, we're gonna jump we're gonna talk about your your new Venture, but I want to make sure folks folks know about Investment Unlimited. Where do you recommend that they go get this what's with some of the best sources?

I think just Amazon. Yeah. I mean it's used to be the or if you're at a deaf set out or devops thing the ability to be doing a lot of book signing this year.

Yeah. Yeah because we we went to work for a company. Turns out we we both in parallel at the same time.

We knew each other and we were both leaving right at and we didn't actually know that each other. We're leaving right at and found out we were both talking to this startup because they both it's like my well, you know, we think alike right we saw what these guys were doing is coming out on Oslo call Hosley. They had built a big piece of that story and so bill was in Europe reached out to him.

I met him at a conference and we didn't even know we were talking so and then turns out we both got hired almost about the same time. And so it is, you know, the short version of it is, you know, it was a company it was doing a quite a bit of what is described in that book already three all day, but over three million of funding if five or six real customers in your real Banks running it and you know, my unbelievable Delight when bill came in he was able to take a bunch of the projects that he's Working on and I'll do this pitch if you want to see an unbelievable demo reach out to me and Bill. Sorry Mitch gonna do this because bill has missed me this incredible demo that it it's mind-blowing on.

How you should you buy Into The Narrative of the book and if you don't like God bless you, but but you do and you want to see an implementation of it, I you know, I'm just passionate about this is I've been in almost anything in my bed, and I ended my whole background that but we have we have this story in a problem that has to be cleaned up and solved. Oh, yeah now I'm thanks for the words of confidence. Yeah, that's something big words of Confidence from big person.

So, um, yeah, you know what? I mean some of the stuff we build it was some Upstream open source from from a previous life. And so we're bringing it in and at the end of the day, you know with constantly and we're trying to do is you know, there's every day every time we're talking to somebody in various throughout the world.

They're trying to do some version if they read the book or not. The number one feedback I've got about the book at least from customers people to talk to and this has been as high as see sweet and some big companies and as you know, it is just a little Autumn pool is the person that the single devops engineer is it gives everybody something to talk about? It's a common story people and navigate around and then actually start to understand a bit of the architecture and some implementation details around this and I think that's where you know, the John I with the right now is costly being able to actually bring it in.

I mean in the Enterprise, you know, the Enterprise doesn't want to build so they want to build software for their customers and you know, of course make one of that way some of those other supporting software like a system such as Investments unlimited talks about you know, those are those are things that you know, expert vendors, you know, if an opportunity to to provide those values and so it's been fun being able to John and ask is called getting the band back together. Yeah, the company name again just so folks get it. com.

It actually has some score on Norwegian. Reference to the United States it actually is sort of an offshoot of a real world, but it's one of those ones where if you have all of us have started companies the hardest thing the company is not the product not the IP. It's getting a name that you can actually get the domain and trademark.

Yeah. It you can get all the variations of binding of four character name. Yeah that they actually found was that's probably the biggest success story so far.

So I have a question. There's you know, there's the demo in the book, right? Yeah because it gets talks about real stuff.

So it did the demo in the book Inspire the product and you kind of build it that way or is this like building the product in this demo in the book is describing? No, it's what's interesting is one of the team and one of the author is was on the 2019 paper and he left that paper and he built an internal system like this, right so I didn't working with them over the years. I introduced them the bill and And the the thing was that these guys have been the there's two Founders over the founding.

The costly Founders had come up with this idea on their own. Because they saw this problem with some banks in Europe that they've been working with and so as they tell it. They're literally, you know, just getting their funding.

They're sort of got a couple of customers and out of trying to figure out how are they going to get in the US market and they see this book show up. And they're like, oh my goodness, we're doing this and then like even like better from I'm a devops. Today's DC in there there and like I start talking over like, oh my goodness.

The guy who wrote one of the guys who wrote the book might want to come to work for us mean while he's over in Europe and he pings him and like they like, oh my God, this is like, this is ridiculous. We wanted we had no idea. I mean, I don't say no idea but they they do is gonna be difficult for sort of a Norwegian company to break glass in the US and see this book and they're like, oh my goodness where that come from and then they serendipitously run into two of the other book and I have nothing pretty pretty good pipe hitting guys to solve the problem as well.

But but yeah, I know that they don't say they tell that story a lot about how like, they couldn't believe their luck, you know, so maybe instead of find the domain the company name the domains and the t-shirt. It's now the book. You got it, right?

Okay. This has been a lot of fun. Yeah and frankly and honor to talk with you both about it.

How would you both in very high regard and appreciate our Ship to and build more recently meeting you and John know for a little while now. So Investments unlimited check it out, please it's what hundred and forty some pages. It's a quick read.

You can do a little book club that work. com. Yeah.

Okay. Now the product it's okay guys. Oh you have it on I didn't see that we had yeah, yeah.

But yeah, well wonderful appreciate you both being here in to spend a lot of fun. So good luck with the Venture and thanks for the book, too. Thank you, sir.

All right, but