From Burnout to Breakthrough: Rediscovering Purpose in Tech

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called How to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, Let's get on with the show. There's a knife in our heart Welcome back to the MVP show. Today we're heading to Connecticut in the US. Please welcome Jared, a solution architect at Avpoint, and one of the sharpest minds in the Microsoft MVP community. As always, in the show notes, you will find links that are mentioned in this episode. Jared, how's it going?

00:00:56 Jared Matfess 
It is going great, Mark. I appreciate you making time and letting me give me a platform, so I appreciate that.

00:01:02 Mark Smith 
I love it, and I'm so keen to hear your story. You've got so many points of interest in your profile that I want to unpack. Before we do, that, food, family, and fun, what do they mean to you?

00:01:13 Jared Matfess 
Food, family, and fun. So I don't want to brag, but I'm definitely, I'm top 10% of Chipotle consumers in the state of Connecticut, so I'm a big fan of sort of that. fast casual Mexican food. Again, I don't know if I get any sort of award with that, but it's definitely an honor and a badge that I carry with me. From a family perspective, it's my wife, May, and we've got two dogs, two French bulldogs that I like to joke, kind of share one brain. They are sort of attached at the hip, sometimes literally, as they're wandering through the house. And it's actually, if it wasn't so late, one of them would probably be sleeping behind me right now, but they've commandeered the couch. So that is where they live. My wife is a nurse. So it's kind of an interesting blend of sort of the tech and then the stuff that's actually really important in life, the things that actually matter. So it's a nice sort of balancing act that we play. And from a fun perspective. So it's always the hardest question for me to answer. I don't, it was always like, what hobbies do you do? I love travel, like I'm a big fan of travel. I find that I always learn something, and I just love connecting with people, different cultures, different languages, different food. And I really do believe strongly that if more people traveled, we'd have better perspectives. And I think there'd be a little bit more sort of calm to the chaos. And for me, like, you know, travel is about watching some cool movies on a long flight, landing in some exotic place, eating some interesting food, and definitely being my wife's personal cameraman for the period of time that we are traveling. And that is typically what I do for fun for unwinding.

00:02:58 Mark Smith
I love that. That's cool. close to my heart, the travel. In the MVP program, what side of the house do you come from before November 2022 when AI took front of focus for you? What were you doing prior to that and how have things changed in the last two and a bit years or so, how long it's been?

00:03:26 Jared Matfess
I think it'd probably be helpful to share a little bit about my overall, kind of my overall MVP journey, 'cause I think that really helps shape sort of who I am and how I've always approached the program. So I have never been someone that's very comfortable in front of large crowds. In fact, I'm an extreme introverted extrovert, is that what I like to say? I do really love people. I tend to fall back a little bit and be the shy, quiet person in any sort of crowd. When I was working in industry, so my career is usually in periods of 10, 11 years. So I spent 11 years in aerospace and defense. I worked for a large government contractor here in the States. And we were going through this journey of moving off of our legacy Plumtree portal and having us implement SharePoint 2010. And At that exact moment, or pretty close to it, we got hit with a rather large fine from the U.S. State Department. And it's public news now, so I can speak freely about it. But what happened is we ended up shipping a part to China. And it was a dual use part. It could be both for military application and for commercial application. And unfortunately, Once it was shipped, there was a bit of covering up that happened and some investigations that happened. And long story short, a very large $75 million fine got levied against my former employer. It's a lot of money. And that was back in like the 2013, 2012 timeframe, right? So that's probably even more money now when you factor in inflation. As you can imagine, this culture went from, oof, let's enable things to let's turn it all off, turn everything off, shut everything down, have way more controls. And I'm right in the middle of trying to implement SharePoint 2010, which is all about open collaboration and everybody sharing files and the exact opposite of anything you think about, like when it comes to just Microsoft collaboration. And I found myself having to become a pseudo data security expert really fast because it was one of those. We're spending millions of dollars to get off Plumtree. We've got all this legacy content to move. We need to have this environment to land it into. And we have to ensure that we do not create additional fines given our collaboration platform. So long story short, I went, I partnered with actually my current employer, but at the time they were, you know, App Point was a vendor. And what I found was sharing our story was very impactful for a lot of people. And so I started to go, I was already an attendee of like SharePoint Saturday events.

00:06:03 Jared Matfess
So I already like was learning from really smart people, the Scott Hilliers, the Jason Himelsteins, these people that to me could just walk on water. Like they were just the smartest minds, amazing storytellers. And I remember like, you know, saying, maybe I should go submit and tell my story. And then, and Jason Himelstein encouraged me. Just submit. Anyone can do it. You don't have to be an MVP. Anybody can share their story. And I did that. And I had really good attendance for my first session. And I got to tell my story and I got to answer all sorts of questions. And it felt so good helping other people that I kind of got like that little high of like, oof, this is kind of fun. This is kind of a wild ride. And then what happened after that is I was... I left my employer, I went into consulting, and I found myself sort of pivoting into more developer topics. So, again, as a consultant, you're always trying to solve problems with the platform. And I found myself attending sessions with really smart people, like Andrew Connell is perhaps one of the smartest developers that you'll ever meet. But I found in Andrew's sessions, I struggled. I didn't understand his topics, he was too deep. He was too 400 level, and I'm a 100 level. And What I ended up doing is I ended up learning, kind of self-taught, and I started doing sessions where I was actually doing the 101, 102 level session of how to build a SharePoint web part using JavaScript and HTML, and I had packed rooms. packed rooms. And it was people afterwards asking me questions and loving the fact that I gave them my code and loving the fact that it wasn't super complicated. Like literally go get some data from a list, present them at a table, and to them that was magic. And the fact that I could step them through every single piece of it was incredible. So I started to do both presentations. I started to get recognition from other MVPs of like, who's this kid? Who's this kid that's pulling folks to attend? And I eventually ended up getting nominated for for a SharePoint MVP back in the day. And I held that for six years.I got right into kind of through the COVID 2022-ish. And in 2021-22, I hit the wall. I hit the wall hard. I hit it really, really hard. I had a hard time getting out of bed. I had a hard time contributing to the community. I had struggles. It was rough. And I I walked away.

00:08:37 Jared Matfess
I didn't even bother renewing. I said, I can't do this. I don't have it in me. I don't feel like I showed up well. And all sorts of burnout. Took a couple of years. I got cajoled into helping co-write a book on M365 Copilot with a couple of colleagues. And I kind of got my mojo back. I kind of got into that groove of wanting to explain things to people. And Copilot to me was actually, it was a huge catalyst for that. I saw the wave, I saw the change, I saw the need to be able to break down the complex and make it very consumable for individuals who are juggling all sorts of various tasks throughout their day. Like how do you keep up with the Copilots? Because, and it was funny, I was, sorry, it's like the longest story in terms of like my journey, but like, I was in a meeting with my previous company, consulting company, our previous CTO, and we had just signed up for Early Access Preview. She had just cut a check for $108,000 for off 300 licenses, and our Microsoft account team was trying to sell us on Copilot Studio. And I'm watching the back and forth of the account team, explaining to our CTO, and she's like, but I just gave you money. Like, we haven't even given out the licenses. You're asking for more money. Like, we have Copilot. They're like, no, no, no, it's a different Copilot. And I was sitting here just chuckling to myself going, they're literally attacking us with Copilots. Microsoft is attacking us with all these Copilots. And I started to do a sort of a spin off of Microsoft AI Wars, Attack of the Copilots. And I'll be honest with you, that was a really fun sort of session that I gave, and I've done that quite a few times. Super long story short, I hop back into the program and what I focus on, right, because there's so many smart people, there's so many people that are in the program that I'm just humbled to even be in. in that same sort of category. But for me, I've always centered on how do I explain the complicated to people that don't have the time to fully consume it?

00:10:45 Jared Matfess
The people that don't go ahead and listen to podcasts, the people that don't have time to go to conferences, the people that just, and they don't have that focus. How do I break down the concepts in a way that are easy to comprehend? Because that was me at one point, and if I'm able to get back just a little bit, I feel like I'm sort of justifying my space when I'm not the smartest, I'm not the most clever, I'm not the most technical, I've just got these little bits of things that I've done throughout my career. And it's always been centered on explaining the difficult to explain.

00:11:18 Mark Smith
This, I mean, an amazing story there and resonating on so many levels with, I've seen so many people in the program get burnt out and struggle to walk away and then their identity after it and the, and sometimes very bitterness that comes from not being in it in the program anymore. And it's interesting that you've done full loop and come back in.

00:11:43 Jared Matfess
And I can see, I can understand the bitterness. I mean, I actually, when I got nominated again, I got rejected the first time. And I had some... I had some mixed feelings about that. I mean, the whole process in itself, it's not really set up in a way where you get the detailed feedback on what you could have done better. It's really sort of that black box that comes out with not a lot of information. And it's tough because, and I don't mean to say this in a way that's any sort of knock on any individual, but sometimes when you do that sort of comparison of yourself against others, you question, what did they get in for that I didn't? What are they doing differently? And you start telling yourself this story of something where you feel some way slighted. And I didn't go all the way there, but there were moments afterwards where I was just a little discouraged and said to myself, maybe I'm just not, maybe this is actually a blessing, maybe I shouldn't be back in, maybe it's just I'm not cut out anymore now that everything's evolved. But I have a pretty good network of friends that are MVPs and talk to them and we've got a lot of encouragement around, just don't let the one rejection get you down, like keep at it and don't really focus on, just focus on doing what you enjoy doing, which is, meeting with people, explaining, talking to them about how to integrate this new tech into their enterprise. And I think one of the bits of feedback I got from one of my good friends, Mike, is he goes, you've got a lot of different experiences. You've worked at a really big aerospace and defense firm, like almost 200,000 people. So your mind for enterprise scale is very different than a lot of other people's minds. You didn't spend time in consulting. So you've taken out of both those things and weave that together and just keep leaning into that. And that's what I did. Ended up getting back in the program again after another round of sort of nomination and contributions. And I don't want to say it was any one thing, but it was I think it was just the village kind of lifted me up, which was a pretty cool feeling.

00:13:52 Mark Smith
That is amazing. And once again, good that you've told that story because I think it'll resonate with many people. Just this week, I did my first nomination in over seven years of nominating somebody into the program. And in the nomination process, I said to them, Listen, you got to think that when I nominate, you'll get an e-mail instantly. And the reason it's instant is because it's automation. behind it. And even the process that you go through of, you know, saying who you are and why you should be in the program, remember that this will go into potentially a 90 day never, never land, a black box, so to speak. And you know, you and I have both seen the massive changes in the program just in the last, let's say three months. of people and roles and shifts and as Microsoft jostled their organization into a new world. And so sometimes it might be that nobody even looked at the application. They just was like, We've got such a backlog. Let's just deny these people and let's tread some water to get the clarity. But the problem is, is there's humans on the other end of all those denial emails, right? That then start a dialogue that can, you know, if not careful, can spin you out into, you know, so I think it's good that you voice that and may give hope to some people. Tell me about your book. How long has it been in market? What's the nexus of it? What's the, what are people gonna learn from your book?

00:15:33 Jared Matfess
Man, that's a fun question. So the book is maybe two weeks old. And I'm not quite sure exact release date because it's very complicated when it goes from being published to sent to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And there was some gentleman out in the UK that got it before I even got my author copy. So I don't know how any of that worked. I don't understand because I thought it was published. I thought it was printed here. So somehow he was already sending me pictures. I was like, how did you get my book? I don't have my book yet. You have my book. But I was actually, so this is book number, technically book #2. This is my Microsoft Copilot Studio Quick Start Guide. And what happened is the previous one, the M365 Copilot at work, that was something that took about a year with four of us. And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to spill all the beans and talk about all behind the scenes drama, but let me just tell you that four people writing about a 300 and something page book, that's a little bit of a problem. It shouldn't have taken that long. I could maybe blame Microsoft a little bit for changing things along the way, but the reality is you had four inexperienced people just sort of doing their best to band together and write this book. And as we were doing some peer tech editing, chapter 14 was on Copilot Studio, and I knew nothing about Copilot Studio at all. Like, I heard of it, but I'm not really a true developer. I'm not really a true maker. I'm more of a tinkerer. I like to say I'm a Jared of all trades. And I had a tech peer edit this chapter 14, and I found things in it that were incorrect. And there was a mix of reasons. There was some usage of ChatGPT to do some rewriting, and unfortunately, there's some hallucinating and there wasn't some sort of sort of person, human in the loop to correct that before it got sent to me to tech review. And besides the fact that I kind of had a little oops moment where like, this is a problem, we need to fix this, we need to make sure that this is on the up and up. I also discovered that I was very interested in learning more about Copilot Studio, and I said I would raise my hand and I would rewrite this chapter. because it was really just an introduction chapter. And I said, if there's anyone that's good at learning something very quickly and trying to regurgitate what it is that it does, that's probably me on our team. And I don't know how I did it, but I basically, in a week, wrote chapter 14 with having no Copilot Studio experience. And I just thought, this is super cool. Like, this is some really cool technology. as someone that has dabbled a little bit in front end dev, I was like, this has super potential. And I was chatting with our editor and I was like, Brad, like, how does one go about writing a book by themself? Like, how does that happen? Like, I go, I got kind of pulled into this one, but, you know, what do you think? Like, you've read my writing, you've edited it. Like, do you think I could do a book myself? Do you think I could do a copilot studio book? Because that, That kind of feels like it'd be a lot of fun. I feel like I can go kind of deep on that. And he gave me encouragement. He goes, Your writing style is very easy to understand. Usually, I'm just giving you feedback because I have to give you feedback because I'm an editor. Otherwise, I'm not doing my job. But he goes, For the most part, your concept's pretty good. He said, Go for it. And I reached out to Wiley again and said, Hey, sorry this other book took a year. Not fully my fault. I was part of it, but not all of it. It was a team effort. And Wiley said, You know what, we got great feedback from Brad. If you can punch out 300 pages in six months, yours, we can do it. So, because I'm crazy, I was like, Challenge accepted, let's not take any breaks, let's just keep writing. So I went ahead and signed a contract and said I would write this book. And let me tell you, it's a lot harder to write a book than to write one chapter on Copilot Studio.

00:19:29 Jared Matfess
It was an interesting labor of love, it was a lot of nights and weekends. And it was a lot of aggravation as Microsoft continued to, and continues to, make updates to the product. It is, if I told you how many times I had to redo screenshots, I would do, man, you're gonna set myself off. But I do have one funny story about all of it. So again, sorry, Mark, I just kind of keep going. Like that's my stop. So I was writing, I think this chapter nine is on autonomous agents. And I was still sort of in the pseudo preview era of the technology. And I came up with this great concept because again, for what I do at AppPoint, it's a mix of pre-sales and I'm usually at some conferences and I'm working booths and I'm meeting people. And there's always the, if you have a really good conversation, you want to capture it and you want to follow up because obviously, we're a software company and sales is what drives are. our stock price, all our metrics and KPIs. And it's always a little bit challenging to fully do that when you're at a conference. And I had this clever idea of, imagine someone fills out, scans a QR code, fills out a quick form, and then we fill out the information, and the agent grabs that info, and it goes and looks in CRM and sees, is that a contact that exists? If not, create the contact, create an opportunity, notify the account manager, do all this cool stuff. And I did a mix of Salesforce and then Power Automate Workflow and Team. But I had a really slick solution. And it was pretty cool. And I was so proud of myself. I built it. It worked. I was like, this is going to-- people are going to love this use case. And I sent it in. And the whole editing process usually goes, I write the editor, Brad, sort of the actual grammar. Well, yeah, grammar and sort of structure editor. gives feedback, and then he kicks it over to the tech editor. The tech editor goes through and makes sure that the functionality works. I'm not hallucinating myself. I'm actually giving you real information and that the readers are going to get what they need. And my tech editor, Norm Young, who's an MVP, he's based out of the Canada, like outer Buffalo area of Canada. Now he's become one of my really tight friends. He messages me on Teams. He goes, Jared, just got your chapter on autonomous agents. And he goes, It doesn't work. I'm like, no, no, Norm, I'm telling you, this is the coolest thing I've built in my career. It works. And I go, you must have missed a step. Let's troubleshoot. I'll help you figure out what you missed. And I'm looking through and no, his config was spot on. I go, hold on, Norm. Let me show you work in my tenant and then we can cross compare. There's got to be some semicolon missing or whatever, something stupid that's going to cause some break. I look across the two and they're identical, and then I go to run a test on mine and it doesn't work. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, when's the last modified? Nope, last modified the day I sent in the chapter. I hadn't touched it since. No modifications. And by the way, when you write a book or chapter, you have screenshots of all the things you did. I went back, looked at my screenshots. I go, this thing was working. I have success screens in my chapter of it working. Now, you know what happened? Microsoft pushed an update, broke everything, and I talked to other people that had built other things, and we were all hosed at the same time.

00:22:46 Jared Matfess
Now, while that may be good, because it's under the umbrella of preview, when you have an editor with a deadline with dates that you have to hit, that creates some very fun stress in terms of how do you solve for that. And the way I ultimately solve for it, which is a bummer, but it's, again, this is sort of how the business works. I went with a much simpler use case and therefore it all worked. It was less complicated, less sort of things that could go wrong. It's just kind of a bummer 'cause I was like, Damn, that use case was killer. I'm waiting until I feel like I can put my heart back into it and create that use case one more time to make sure that, I think it'll work now. I think now that they're done sort of tinkering with the backend stuff, but that was a fun and stressful time being a solo author. on an ever-changing book, which, one last note, I love that my reader out in the UK notified me that, yep, some of your screens are not quite right. But that's the nature of software, right?

00:23:43 Mark Smith
It's always changing. It's always changing.

00:23:45 Jared Matfess
Always changing, so.

00:23:46 Mark Smith
Jared, it's been epic having you on. We'll make sure we get the links in the show notes for this episode. I love your story, and I hope it's gonna resonate with a bunch of people that listen to this.

00:23:57 Jared Matfess
I hope so too. Yeah, Mark, I appreciate the blabber. I appreciate the conversation. It's been great.

00:24:07 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Business Application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365uy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.