Education And A Good Sense Of Humor - Sandra Batakis - Leadership in Action- Episode #55

Welcome back to another episode of Leadership In Action! Joining the show this week is an IT visionary who started her journey into Information Technology over 20 years ago. Providing both consulting and training, she has over 200 video based courses available for purchase worldwide. Please welcome to the show, Founder and CEO of Sandra Network, Sandra Batakis. Host Mark Stiles sits down with Sandra to learn about the importance of having an easily communicable name, using education and humor to handle conversations with clients, and Sandra’s gardening setup in Maine. Takeaways: Many people are drawn to being an entrepreneur because you “get to make your own schedule”. You do get to make your own schedule, but that schedule revolves around running a business. A lot of people view being an entrepreneur as not having a boss. While you don’t have a traditional manager, both your customers and employees end up being your boss as you have to meet their needs. It is important to make sure your company name is easily communicable, and that people can spell it and find it easily.  When you face business challenges, it is tempting to first go to your spouse or friends for advice. While they may be great listeners, and incredibly caring, if they don’t run businesses their advice may fall a little short. Imposter syndrome is more common than you may think. Those same feelings of inability can provide a powerful tool to help you identify areas to learn more about.  Despite strides made to improve the gender gap, networking IT still remains a heavily male dominated field. Having recorded educational content provides value in multiple ways. That content can be used as a marketing tool, but it can also be used as an onboarding tool when implementing new processes at a client of yours.      Links:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/SandraNetwork  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandranetwork/  Website: https://sandranetwork.com/  Quote of the Show “Anyone who thinks they are permanently on top, is wrong.” - Sandra Batakis Ways to Tune In: Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-in-action/id1585042233 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2t4Ksk4TwmZ6MSfAHXGkJI Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/leadership-in-action Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGVhZGVyc2hpcGluYWN0aW9uLmxpdmUvZmVlZC54bWw Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/4263fd02-8c9b-495e-bd31-2e5aef21ff6b/leadership-in-action YouTube - https://youtu.be/9UhnUYBv8ew     Transcript: Mark Stiles: hey folks. Welcome back to Leadership in Action. This is your Boston chapter of EOS podcast. Today's. Is an IT visionary. She started her journey into information technology over 28 years ago, providing both consulting and training. She has 200 video-based courses available for purchase worldwide. In 1999, she started her own company with the goal to combine great IT support with user functionality. She's been neo member for under one year. She's the founder and c e O of Sandra Network. Please meet Sandra Patak. Welcome to the show, Sandra. Sandra Batakis: Thanks, mark. Glad to be here.  Mark Stiles: Cool. You ready to get right into it? Sure. Let's go. What is a common misconception about leader? Running a business and or being an entrepreneur to you?  Sandra Batakis: Ah, that's easy. Uh, that it is easy, actually. I guess that is a misconception, , um, that I get to make my own schedule and I seem to have endless vacation time ,  Mark Stiles: so it's easy at the top. Look at me at the top, I'm at the top. I'm doing it all.  Sandra Batakis: Absolutely. I stroll in and out what I want, you know, there's, there's no one above me to tell me what to. And, uh, I guess that's pretty wrong, right? Well, so  Mark Stiles: tell me the reality of it. .  Sandra Batakis: Well, you know, the reality is I might not make it in the office till, you know, 10, but I've been up since five hitting it, you know, and, and sometimes I'm hitting it cuz I'm on the treadmill trying to clear my head and sometimes I've cranking out emails at, you know, 5:15 AM and um, there's, there's a lot to it. And you know, when you're an entrepreneur they think it's great cuz you don't have a boss. But, uh, I have more bosses than. Right. All my customers are bosses. I consider my employees bosses. You know, I have to account for them. I have to provide them a good working environment. You know, I can, I can fire them, but they can fire me by deciding to go somewhere else. So I think the, the concept of I have no bosses the furthest from the reality, uh, in this world, that's  Mark Stiles: a really interesting concept as having. , the employees. Your team members are your boss too. I, I like that. I like that a lot. So tell us about your company a little bit. The name of it is interesting. Sandra Network. How did you come up with such a  Sandra Batakis: creative name? Yeah. Well, you know, when I first started, I didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I became s JB Enterprises. Yeah. Well, s JB Enterprises is nothing about what we do, and I spent my entire life going. S s as in Sam. B as in boy, J like S like no one could get the letters. And ekkos at s jb was an impossibility. Um, so I decided to rename my company literally over my email address because it just wasn't flowing. It just didn't position us. Um, and after a lot of soul searching, one day I looked down and realized that we do security. and administration and networking and data and remote assistance. And as an acronym, that's spelled Sandra. So Sandra is what we do. It happens to also be my name, but it's what we do.  Mark Stiles: I love it. I love it. I love, love, love that. So tell us, and for  Sandra Batakis: the record, my email address, [email protected]. I never have to spell it anymore. I don't have to sound out letters. People remember. it worked ,  Mark Stiles: and there's real meaning behind it, which is really, really cool. Tel...