Mastering SharePoint & Self-Branding with “Mr. SharePoint” Therman Trotman

[00:00:00] Therman Trotman: Take your confidence from literally what you know. If you don't know something, it's okay to say, I don't know. But if you do. And you know what you're talking about, say it with your chest. You didn't work and learn all them years to now have imposter syndrome. If you know what you're talking about, what do you, what's the, where's the imposter part?

Maybe the imposter comes in when you're doing something that you probably don't know much about, you know what I'm saying? So you won't hear me screaming from the mountaintops about branding. Cause you know, I'm learning about that. I'm going through that journey, but I will, with my chest, say the things that I do about SharePoint, because I know what I'm talking about 

[00:00:54] Ryan Connell: Hey, this is Ryan Connell with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Join today with Therman Trotman. Therman, how you doing?

[00:01:01] Therman Trotman: I'm great. I'm always great.

[00:01:02] Ryan Connell: Awesome. Mr. SharePoint, I should say. that's how I, that's how I met you. why don't you go ahead and give a self introduction?

[00:01:09] Therman Trotman: Yeah. so I like to keep it short and sweet, but you know, I'm from the Bronx, New York. I grew up watching three teams. So you can see behind me, which team I picked as a matter of fact, I picked that team because at the time I knew no other person on the face of the planet with the name Therman, but the bills, they had Therman Thomas on there.

Great running back. And I was like, all right, you know what? That's my team. So I've been riding with them ever since. No, no rings yet. You know what I'm saying? But we looking good these, these days.

[00:01:35] Ryan Connell: I would say, yeah, the vast improvement over the last couple of 

years, 

[00:01:38] Therman Trotman: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Things are looking better. so yeah, born and raised in the Bronx. Then. I did. I went to the army for four years.

Then I did, one year in the guard. Then after that, I became, a contractor supporting the government. Wasn't in my dreams. I didn't have any plans on doing that, but I did. And early on, I don't know, maybe six or seven years in, I can't remember. Somewhere around 2009, I got introduced to SharePoint. And when I saw what SharePoint could do for the organization, I basically fell in love, you know what I'm saying?

So, since then I've been doing my thing late 2021. I stopped being a regular employee and I went independent. And since then I've been, you know, trying to grow this business, the SharePoint help desk where I teach folks how to use SharePoint.

[00:02:20] Ryan Connell: Okay. So that's full time. You are a, people come to you and say, I need help SharePoint and you put classes and curate training and all of that for them.

[00:02:29] Therman Trotman: Right? Well, there's three things I do. SharePoint development, SharePoint training, and SharePoint consulting. That those are the three parts of, my business, but the one that I'm trying to grow on its own is the training. So I've been doing development for forever. So since. I actually been doing training too.

I've been doing all three of those things, but going independent to get work development, developing, like winning contracts, that's pretty easy. It's not difficult to do. I'm in high demand. It's, you know, I win a contract, I do what I got to do, but to bring this technology to the world and teach people how to use it, that's a different angle.

You know what I mean? And that's the arm that I'm trying to grow is the training portion.

[00:03:12] Ryan Connell: Got it. No, that's super helpful. And when you and I first connected, you know, I saw that, tagline, Mr. SharePoint on your LinkedIn profile, I grinned and I'm like, I gotta talk to this guy. so, uh, before we get into like SharePoint, all that, I loved for me, at least as an outsider meeting you for the first time, it was, there was no questions in what you do.

Right. Like Mr. SharePoint, like that's, that's my brand. Um, I love that you kind of create that brand for yourself. Uh, and I, you know, my, I have my own personal experiences where you're working in an office place, you get good at something, everyone comes to you for that name recognition and kind of spirals, and that's how you can progress in your career.

talk to me about like how important is that something you can consider like building a brand, like that's something that you're yeah, go for it.

[00:03:55] Therman Trotman: Yeah, it's it's all right. So I got active on LinkedIn. and when I was doing this by default, I talk about SharePoint all day every day. So I was talking about, I used to have a different tagline under my name. I would like to, I was testing various things, but I used to, one thing that I used to do frequently was join these audio rooms.

I used to join audio rooms all the time on LinkedIn. I still do, but. I was way more frequent back then. And so it gave me a chance to like actually talk to people and get to know people, right. Better than just, typing on the screen. So as I'm joining these rooms, I'd come in, I'd talk, I'd have a good time when I'd be on stage, but people would have a way to greet me that you can't do on text. And they'd be like, Hey, it's Therman, Mr. SharePoint. And I'd be like, all right, everybody relax. You know what I'm saying? Cause I don't want to, I didn't feel comfortable saying Mr. SharePoint. I thought that was crazy. You know what I'm saying?

Because I'm in the SharePoint world and I see other developers who, they have my utmost respect and I think that they could knock it out of the park way more than I can You know I'm saying when it comes to development, so I was just like there's no way I'm gonna like walk around calling myself Mr. SharePoint. I'm not doing that and it was kind of cheesy You know I'm saying but then more and more in the audio rooms One day they were like, but you know, miss Excel, right? And I was like, yeah, I know Ms. Excel everybody knows Ms. Excel she was like, miss Excel branded herself as miss Excel. And now she's known as miss Excel.

And I thought about that because I knew her too, because if anybody said to me, miss Excel, I know exactly who they're talking about. You know what I'm saying? So I was like, okay, fine. I'll try it. I'll put Mr. SharePoint under my name and I'll put the emoji there with the shades too.

You know what I'm saying? Just in case, just so people know it's kind of goofy. You know what I'm saying? So I was like, let me try it. The, from the time that I put that there, multiple people were addressing me that way and multiple people Even in the DM, we're like, man, with a tag like that, we got to connect.

And I was just like, man, this thing is working. So I already knew about branding, but I personally, admittedly, I don't pick up like how important it is to do certain things. And so reluctantly, I put that tag under my name, and now I'm like, nah, it needs to stay there. And so I just keep it there because it's very easy to communicate without me talking that you just see that and it's like, okay, I see what this guy's doing here.

I'm saying goofy or not.

[00:06:13] Ryan Connell: Yeah, So, so on that, right, like There's things like imposter syndrome and, a level of, appearance of, arrogance almost like, at what point do you lean in and, don't fake it till you make it right. But like, at what point are you leaning in where you're like, And this is more, I'm looking for like your advice to the listeners, right?

If they feel like they're going after something and that's their brand, when is the right time to say like, that's me, I'm going to identify that way. And I want to start shouting it to the rooftops. Are you at the very end of your expertise? Are you kind of in the middle or are you just starting early off?

Like, what does that look like?

[00:06:46] Therman Trotman: Yeah, I don't think there's any point. I've struggled with struggling with imposter syndrome. The only time that I've struggled with imposter syndrome was putting this thing, this tagline under my name because I felt it, it said something I didn't really feel, I don't feel anybody knows everything on any subject.

There's no such thing. That's not a thing. But if you say Mr. SharePoint, when I, okay, let me not say you, if I Therman, if I say Mr. SharePoint under my tagline, I'm like, man, other people in the SharePoint space are going to see this and say. What like bro, you just got here. What are you talking about?

Which I didn't just get here I've been working. I've been eating sleeping and breathing SharePoint since 2009 But showing up in the world and promoting that's new You know i'm saying is this i'm new here and people who have been there doing that thing They are knee deep in SharePoint too seeing this guy come here talking about um, mr.

SharePoint. I get it. You know what I'm saying? And that's where I would feel like if somebody sees that and says, Hey, this person over here, why would not just go with them? They, uh, they might run circles around you. Without that tagline there, I'd be like, by all means, go ahead. I don't care.

You know what I'm saying? Like that, doesn't mean anything to me, but with the tagline there, it feels like it adds some type of pressure that I'm saying, Hey, I'm that guy. Forget all the other SharePoint stuff. Just come to me. That's not true. One and two, I feel you should take your confidence. This is what I do.

Take your confidence from literally what you know. If you don't know something, it's okay to say, I don't know. But if you do. And you know what you're talking about, say it with your chest. You didn't work and learn all them years to now have imposter syndrome. If you know what you're talking about, what do you, what's the, where's the imposter part?

Maybe the imposter comes in when you're doing something that you probably don't know much about, you know what I'm saying? And that's where it might come in. So you won't hear me screaming from the mountaintops about branding. Cause you know, I'm learning about that. I'm going through that journey, but I will, with my chest, say the things that I do about SharePoint, because I know what I'm talking about.

So I struggle with imposter syndrome or struggle with struggling with imposter syndrome. So for the listeners, I would say, if you know what you're talking about, say it with your chest.

[00:08:58] Ryan Connell: Yeah. Just have that confidence. Right, that makes sense. And I appreciate the humility to be the first one to raise your hand when you don't know something. I think that's super important too. 

[00:09:05] Therman Trotman: Absolutely. Thousand percent.

[00:09:07] Ryan Connell: Awesome. Yeah. I mean, I know there's been evolutions in SharePoint itself even last five years or so.

Um, I can't wait to dive into like what you know about SharePoint compared to what, how little I know about SharePoint, um, cause I, I live with groups of people who just curse SharePoint every day. so I, I'm excited to kind of get into that. So.

Where are we? Cause like my mind, we're just maybe one level removed from a world where I had to like check a file out and like when someone had it checked out, no one could edit it and then I had to wait and like, I would go home for the end of the day and I forgot to check it back in.

And then no one could mess with the file. I assume it's better than that now.

[00:09:49] Therman Trotman: You, you assumed correctly. It is, it's actually way better than that. So the one major change that I always, try to communicate is that there was at a point where to use SharePoint, you needed access, aka Now it's no longer access slash permissions. Now it's education because all Microsoft did was turn it in from, from being an admin tool to now being an end users tool.

So just the same way you would fire up a spreadsheet or open up PowerPoint or open up word, you now can just. Open up SharePoint and use it. It's now at your fingertips to just go ahead and use it. But here's the thing for all of these years, I've been using SharePoint where the regular person that works at a desk, they haven't been.

So they have been asking somebody to do a thing or just considering it a four letter word and being like, you know, I ain't messing with SharePoint. I hate it. So now Microsoft turned it over to where everybody can use it. The only gap is someone sitting there and saying, check this out. Look what you can do.

You can do this, this, this, and this, and this. A very simple process that you can use SharePoint for, right? Which is something you could have done before, but now it's just way more streamlined and way easier. Let's just say, you have somebody that you work with. Handles a thing for you. Maybe they do a customer intake, right?

So they do customer intake at your auto body shop. Somebody walks in, they tell you what the problem is. This person doing the intake, they'll fire up the computer, start typing the words that the person is saying to them. The person can type some words into a form, hit submit. And then that message gets sent to someone else in the company.

And in the company, look, the other person looks at this information. Process it and does whatever they need to do. This is a super watered down, very basic process. That you can use SharePoint for. And a lot of people get confused and think, Oh, well, SharePoint is just a document, management library. A part of it is, you know what I'm saying?

It has three major components and one major part is the documents, but it is the biggest change, like I mentioned, is just that you no longer have to have a certain level of access to use it. You just need to know how to use it. And that's what SharePoint helpdesk is for,

[00:12:02] Ryan Connell: Got it. 

[00:12:03] Therman Trotman: to teach you how to use it. 

[00:12:04] Ryan Connell: yeah. So, so just like, let me think of like a use case for me based on what you just said.

Right. 

So. 

[00:12:09] Therman Trotman: Yes, let's make it personal for you. I want to, I want to really drive home the 

point. 

[00:12:13] Ryan Connell: Yeah, yeah. So, companies reach out to CDA all the time and say, Hey, I can't wait to pitch my idea. I want to tell you about what we do. right. That happens today in an email, that flows down to someone's inbox that then schedules it on a calendar invite. it's recorded, but we take notes of course, and then,try to type in various metadata,as accordance to how that interview went and like what we learned about, Hey, here's the company's name.

Here's the point of contact, all that stuff. I think what you're saying is we could make, uh, it'd be Microsoft, Microsoft form that they would fill out. And then that information would automatically be populated in some SharePoint list somewhere. 

[00:12:49] Therman Trotman: hmm. Mm 

[00:12:49] Ryan Connell: Okay. 

[00:12:50] Therman Trotman: we don't stop there though.

Like as soon as it goes from the form into the SharePoint list, it defaults to saying pending, or not started, or whatever you want to use. And then you can say, all right, I'm changing this from not started to, in progress, whatever you change it to for the time you change it to in progress, somebody else gets pinged and they get an email saying, Hey, this thing is in progress.

You need to go check it out. They click the link from the email. They go look at it and they're like, Oh, okay. Um,we need to process this and do X, Y, Z, whatever that can move through the wickets and do all of the things that it needs to do until it hits final. And then when it's final, now it's closed off and it could be off your, let's just say main view of the list.

It could be moved somewhere, but if you want to run metrics on this thing, your SharePoint list has captured all of this information. You could just go do that. If you need to know what was the thing that we said, what notes did we take on this particular thing? Go to the list, search, the name of the person and see when you had them on the show and then click a link that maybe takes you to see all of the notes.

Whatever, everything could be in this main area, tracking it. It's a super powerful tool, low hanging fruit that Microsoft just said, here, go ahead, take this. And it's one tool inside of the whole suite.

[00:14:06] Ryan Connell: And when you talked about the notifications you're talking about, like, like actually something that's automated. Okay.

That's interesting.

[00:14:13] Therman Trotman: Yeah, you could, you, so you have built in automation that says, Hey, Ryan changed this item to in progress. click here to view it. That's the basic out of the box automation. You have stuff like that, but then you have. Powerful automation where it is like Many apps, like an approval app that do all the automation for you.

And then there's a situation in there where there's another tool in there where you're allowed to build your own customized emails. So if you don't just want it to say, Hey, Ryan changed this thing. Maybe you want it to say, we have a new customer. Here's their name. And, here's my quick notes on it. And it is now changed to in progress is up for you to go do your thing.

You can do that. It's all sitting there inside of the suite. You just need education on it. 

And nothing so far have I said is a premium feature. It's all out of the box. All of it.

[00:15:04] Ryan Connell: And I, I mean, I just imagine that there are software solutions that sell the capability that you're describing and potentially people just don't realize that they already have that with their Microsoft subscription.

[00:15:14] Therman Trotman: Correct. All the time.

[00:15:17] Ryan Connell: No, that's super interesting. what else? Let's pull that thread. I think you said there's like three main things.

Uh, I'll let you keep going off about SharePoint.

[00:15:24] Therman Trotman: Okay. So the way I try to recommend everybody remember is with like an acronym. So, you know, if you're familiar with the letters we use in the army, so CMD, so Charlie Mike Delta SharePoint allows you to do those three things. this is a Therman definition, not Microsoft. So CMD, right? So collect information.

Manage information and display information. The collecting of the information would be what we just talked about. So you want a way to like, uh, if the person is sitting at the front desk and they collect information from people walking in, you could do that with SharePoint. Right. Managing information would be the piece for where we were talking about, you know, the podcast guests.

So we manage this in a list and we say things like, you know, Move the completed over to this view or only show me the next upcoming five, shows, or show it to me in a Kanban board or show it to me in a, a calendar or send me a reminder five days before, you know, a new, show is about to be recorded.

All that type of stuff. We get to manage the information and then display the information. This is where I use the word display, but all I'm talking about is a website where a website would allow you to display any kind of information that you want. So SharePoint has this feature which allows you to build sites and display information and literally any and everything you could do with a regular website at XYZ site dot com.

You can do with this SharePoint website is just internal to your team. That's all it is. It's an internal website that SharePoint gives you yet another feature inside of there for you to build whatever you want. So, in the case of, a small company, I recommend any and everything that has to do with your company.

You put it on this site and I don't mean jumbled up and it's all crazy. And it's just one long list of foolishness. I mean, like a well designed, nice looking SharePoint site where everybody in the company, whether you have two, three or 300 or 3000 people or more than that, they know if they're looking for something, they go to that site, that main site.

So that's a thing you can do with a SharePoint. That's one of the, remember I'm talking about one feature, which is SharePoint sites on one tool, which is SharePoint. In the suite, the suite has a ton of other tools that work in conjunction with SharePoint. This is only SharePoint that I'm talking about right now.

[00:17:41] Ryan Connell: and so I have some experience on that before I jumped on that site that you're talking about, ability, like you talked about kind of anything. So, in addition to the list, the visual list of SharePoint things, are we talking about like graphs and that kind of thing as well?

Or what kind of data feed can you actually bring into that 

page? 

[00:17:58] Therman Trotman: Oh, okay. So here's a basic example. So like you go onto the main page and you see a big picture of the team or something like that, or a big picture of uh, uh, aircraft. Cause maybe I'll handle aircrafts or whatever. Then you see, a feed of events coming up. There's a company picnic. There's a big visit happening.

There's a, we got a few days off. Or we got a visit coming from a CEO, a distinguished visitor, whatever. You got an events calendar. Then you have news. Maybe it's internal news. Hey, this person is up for a employee award or there's an inspection coming up or whatever. Announcements. That can sit still and you could see the links or the pitches, or they could scroll through if you want to, you know, like whatever, then you have, um, you could put pitches or you could put buttons to resources.

So maybe your resources are like, you know, view all of our projects, all active projects. So you click a button that says projects and you go to like a projects page. And you see all the active projects, what else? Then you gotany type of picture you want, any kind of, text videos. If you want, maybe there's a video from the CEO at the bottom of the page, whatever.

Like if you can dream, what can be on this front page, it can be there. Now let's talk about graphs to your point. There is a tool in Microsoft called Power BI, which is a, Tool that you use to build visualizations, you know what I mean, on these, build these reports and use visualizations and the reports like pie charts, whatever, all that type of stuff.

This is a premium feature. well, okay. Yes. It's a premium feature inside of the suite. I think it's worth it. If you're going to be, you know, using charts, you can build these charts inside of the suite. And then if you want to take the report and embed it on the homepage. So now the homepage, when you log in, you get to see like the health of the company.

How many, um, you know, in a car situation, how many cars have we, you know, serviced in the last month or whatever the important metric is to you, all of this. It's like a business in a box or office in a box. If you want

that Microsoft office and I'm not even like scratching the surface, but I'll give you one more.

here's a cool one. So Microsoft stream is a video tool. It's like their YouTube, but it's internal. So if the CEO wanted to create a video, you could, you have a tool inside of the suite that you can use to shoot the video, but even if you don't shoot it there, you can host the video there and embed it anywhere you want.

Do you have an onboarding process where you need people to watch three and four videos? You could do that to have them hosted in stream, embed them on pages, make them click the arrow to see the next video after they've watched it. All that type of stuff. you got options.

[00:20:41] Ryan Connell: Yeah. And so this is ideal for small companies that want to just launch their own internal intranet. Here's where all the employees go for everything. Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot. And I, and that's, you hit what I was going to say, which is I had experience in my old office, my, before CDAO.

Actually, we had some really smart people that worked on the team, built us a very robust power BI package, 

where me in a management role was just like, I got all my charts. Like, how many cases do we have? Like, what's the status of all of them? Like all of that stuff, it was beautiful, but to get there, it was a transition from Excel to cleaning the data, to turning it into a SharePoint list.

So there was definitely a lift there, but once it was there, it was definitely worth it.

[00:21:21] Therman Trotman: I love that. That's a great endorsement. I love it. Yes.that's a Testament to what I always talk about. So even though I'm quote, Mr. SharePoint, and I talk about this stuff all day and I can, even though I can't turn blue in the face, I can talk about it until I'm blue in the face. You know what I'm saying?

Now, the thing that I like to drive home, Is that that's not the most important thing to me. The technology is not the most important thing to me. I always say people over technology. That's what's important because SharePoint or any other tool is not going to save you. That's not to save you.

What's more important is how that team works and how they inform processes and all that other stuff. So if you give me, look, I'm not a, I like Excel if I'm using it the way I recommend you use it, which is the way it was supposed to be used. If you give me a subpar team with a powerful tool, it could be SharePoint or any one of these super tools out here.

But you give me the other choices, like a great team that works together. And we have subpar technology every single time I'm going with the great team with the subpar technology, because they will make it work. they will make it work and they'll figure it out. And then if you give that, powerful team, powerful software, they become extremely dangerous, damn near unstoppable because it's not the technology.

It's the team and the processes that they build and how they work together and all that other stuff where technology just comes in and enhances what you're doing. it doesn't change or it doesn't do the thing. You do the thing. It just supports you and makes you do it better.

That's all it is.

[00:22:51] Ryan Connell: Yeah. And frankly, I can share, from, more of a leadership role in that team. It just gave me so much insight that I didn't have to the day to day operations, in terms of like, Hey, why is this team taking, you know, twice as long as every other team? Like what's going on? Let's unpack that. my, my old,executive said something along the lines of like, it's kind of like heroin when you get data and you like, it's like, I want more, I want more.

And it started, you start asking more questions cause you're seeing insights that you never had the ability to see before. So, yeah, I'm a, I'm an advocate for that and advocate for seeing the data, seeing the trends. I think that's how you make appropriate decisions. So I appreciate everything you're doing.

[00:23:29] Therman Trotman: Good deal. And now I will say, seeing the data is yes, that's great. But to add to that, if you are seeing the data of someone who's underperforming, it's not the data's fault. You know what I'm saying? The data will say, Hey, this person is underperforming. Like, let's say they wear an Apple watch to go to the gym.

And you're like, all right, you went to the gym today. And they go, yes. And you're like, all right, let's look at the stats from the watch. And the watch clearly shows that they didn't go to the gym today. So now that informs you of what's going on. But the way do you fix that is you don't fix the Apple watch you talk to the person now Which is a person thing a people thing and then you get them, you know, hey, what's going on?

Is anything going on at home? Are you not feeling the work? Are you you know is what's going on? You handle that issue with the person and then when they get back to doing a thing if they turn it around The data will show you that they have improved so making my point here, which is great I'm glad that you said that because You All the data is doing is supplementing or supporting what you're already doing.

So the data is going to show, you know, not doing well, if you're literally not doing well. So I'm glad you said that. Good

point there. 

[00:24:40] Ryan Connell: I mean, that's a huge point because once you see the data, it's very easy to, say, Hey, you know, Sir, miss, whoever it is, you know, why is your case taking so long? It's been open for twice as long as everyone else. Like, and it's so easy to assume that they messed up and it definitely took some learning, you know, leadership growth, right?

Like just let's assume positive intent. Like they probably didn't do anything wrong. Like either they entered a row, like, and honestly, eight, maybe out of 10 times. It was. Like they entered a number wrong that led to the skewing of data or something happened that just wasn't really their fault.

They really weren't taking twice as long. It was something along the line of the data capture, and, or something that happened outside of their control. so yeah, I, you always had to start that conversation with like, Hey, here's what I see. But I'm sure there's something else. Can you just help me understand this data?

Right. Like you had to kind of frame it that way.

[00:25:30] Therman Trotman: I'm with you. I'm with you.

[00:25:32] Ryan Connell: All right. Well, you, you've seen a whole host of use cases. I'm sure,of SharePoint implementation. Do you have like a, this was one of the coolest things that you've ever seen. Do you have like one of those, like, one of those like really neat, use cases or stories?

[00:25:47] Therman Trotman: yeah. So, the technology okay. Okay. I'll try to make this make sense because it's less technology and more person, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to make this make sense. Okay. So I get. a contract to work part time at Big Org. I'm doing it part time. Big Org is like, Hey, we like this guy. Is there a way that you could get him to, get a bigger contract?

Long, longer term contract. Can we work with him more? I say, yes, I'm all in. Okay. So now I'm supporting a office inside of Big Org and then, someone else. Another office in the organization says, Hey, we need some help. So then I go over there and I help them. And when I first got there, I was supposed to be helping them specifically with this thing, but they sent me some spreadsheets and said, Hey, and we also need to pull some data from these spreadsheets.

I look at the spreadsheets and I'm like, you don't have to do this. You know what I'm saying? Like we could, we could convert these to SharePoint lists. You're telling me that every time that you got to do this, you're sending out a bunch of emails to all these people and they're like, yeah. So I'm like, all right, let's get you converted.

This was a bit of a process. As you know, you just mentioned, you know, I captured the data, some requirements, I figured this thing out. We get them on SharePoint lists. This is probably like a few months during year one. Let's fast forward. Year three now, I'm still supporting them. And one day, the person whose shop I support, she had to share her screen with me to show me a thing. And she goes real quick, she looks at these budget numbers on a Power BI chart. She looks at these numbers and she goes, Alright, so yeah, I was looking at this, and I think that, we're missing a data point, can we get this updated? And I go, yeah, absolutely. And then real quick, I go, Okay, so what you just did, what I just saw you do, how you got there, was that a struggle for you to do before?

And she was like, absolutely. And then she said, I said, alright, That didn't take you much longer. How long did that used to take you to find some, some information like that before she said days. I said, Oh my goodness, that, that lights me up. I love that. You know what I'm saying? Like if I can make that type of impact because I don't look at it as just work.

It's like most people hate their jobs. I'm one of them psychos that love my job. You know what I'm saying? Like I, I wake up every day, excited to do this. She's, she also loves her job because I think most people that I get the best work out of. I'll get the best work out of me. They do enjoy what they do too.

It's a whole thing. If your work is bringing you down, you can easily go home and be down and be drained of your energy and the person at home doesn't have you, you know what I'm saying? And they might have issues. You might have issues at home. Like it's more than just work. It's a part of your life, even though people try to create it separately and say it's a work life thing.

Work is part of your life, period. So, now, that we have been able to free up so much time and so much stress off of her head, because now, doing something simple like just pinpointing and finding data really quickly, was something that I was a part of, I love that, you know what I'm saying? So that's, uh, We did that with SharePoint, and, um, uh, Power Automate, and Power BI.

[00:28:49] Ryan Connell: And you have like very tangible, like, it's very easy to be like something took five days. Now it takes a click, right? Like, so that, that, yeah, that's great. Hey, getting close to time here. definitely appreciate, all your insights. any last words, any pieces of advice for anyone from a either SharePoint perspective or self branding or anything we talked about today?

[00:29:07] Therman Trotman: yeah. So, imposter syndrome, just a reminder, if you know what you're talking about, say it with your chest, uh, as far as branding, listen to the experts, they know what they're talking about. I'm learning and it's working for me. SharePoint, if you want to get started, there's various points, but I know you might be, someone might be out there managing a wacky spreadsheet.

If you want to get better with managing a wacky spreadsheet, You should start with a SharePoint list. I have a place that you could go SharePoint freebie comm that gets you started with a List, it's free.

Well, I mean for the price of an email, you know, I'm saying but it's 100 percent free Where you I take you through the beginning steps of understanding what a list is You And how to use it and how to use it at work. When I show you, you get to use it that same day because you already have access to the three 65 suite and, um, drink water.

Oh, and go easy on the carbs

[00:30:02] Ryan Connell: Go bills. We'll end there.

awesome. Hey, Mr. SharePoint, I appreciate you coming on today. Thanks so much.

[00:30:07] Therman Trotman: All right. And I appreciate it. Thank you.