From Telco to Tech Titan: Mark Tina on Verizon’s Bold Evolution

Mark Tina – Verizon (00:00):

I’ll never forget the person who said this to me, be where your feet are. And it’s so important personally and professionally. And so I’m here with you. I am where my feet are. I am zoned in. There’s times at home, I’m maybe watching a movie with the family. The family will be cracking up. I’ll be thinking about business. I’m not where my feet are. And they’re like, dad, you’re not laughing. And I’m like, no, that was funny. And they’re like, what just happened in the movie? And I’m like, got it. If you’re going to be at the little league field, be where your feet are. If you’re going to be at church, be where your feet are if you’re going to be in business, be where your feet are.

Speaker – Bridgepointe (00:32):

Tech has reshaped our reality, redefining how we live, work, and connect and driving this revolution, real people with bold ideas. Welcome to the Bridge Cast where host Speaker has in-depth discussions with the brightest minds in tech. Together they tackle the future of work, innovation, entrepreneurship, and navigating the new realities. We invite you to experience the better way, the bridgepoint way. Now here’s your host, Speaker.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (01:10):

Welcome to another episode of the Bridge Cast. Super thrilled. We’re here in Sunny and today, slightly balmy at Las Vegas at the Channel Partners Expo and conference. And I’m thrilled to be joined by Mark Tina of Verizon. Mark, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here. Appreciate it. I’m thrilled that you are. And so you’ve been at Verizon for quite a long time. Tell us what you do there and a little bit maybe about that journey.

Mark Tina – Verizon (01:37):

Sure. It’s been 22 years at Verizon. I graduated college. I started with a competitor and three years after I came to Verizon. And it has been a terrific ride ever since. I started out in the direct sales business organization knocking on doors, cold calling in the boroughs of New York City. I’ve worked in various parts of Verizon on both the business side, the consumer side. Right now, currently I lead all indirect distribution for Verizon business as well as our Fios business, which is really exciting. It’s our fiber network that we built out over 20 years ago and it’s still rocking today and it’s just an exciting time in our business where I get to work with so many indirect partners, which is what brings us to channel partners here in Las Vegas this

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (02:20):

Year. Yeah,

Mark Tina – Verizon (02:21):

Well thrilled that we had the

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (02:21):

Opportunity to do this in person, which is great. You don’t hear 22 years at one company very often. What’s the key to that kind of staying power from a career perspective?

Mark Tina – Verizon (02:32):

I don’t just say this, I hope to work here another 20. And I say that because the company gives you the opportunity to do what you want with your career.

Mark Tina – Verizon (02:42):

It has all of the tools, all of the resources necessary, and it’s such a large corporation that there’s so many places you can go. In fact, I do take on a new role every two to three years that’s very unlike the last role. And so while I’ve been in one place for a couple of decades, I’ve had so many different jobs and there’s so many out there that I have not done yet that I do feel like it’s a different company, yet it’s the same company. And I could go on and on about the benefits and the reasons, but the real reason, it’s the people, the v teamers that we have that I’ve built lifelong relationships with mean the most to me. And I just get out of bed excited and fired up every day to be a v teamer.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (03:21):

That’s awesome. I’m going to get right to it though on the career advice side. Of

Mark Tina – Verizon (03:24):

Course,

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (03:24):

Not everybody at Verizon who’s been there for 22 years is sitting in your seat. So a word of advice for somebody maybe mid-career who’s looking to ascend to the heights that you have in your career. I’m not stroking your ego here, but the heights that you have in your career inside of a company, you give us one piece of advice, career advice.

Mark Tina – Verizon (03:44):

I’ll tell you what, I give this advice to new hires when I speak to them. I go into their classes a lot and I say, look at Verizon as a career and not a job. I think nowadays people do move jobs a lot more frequently and I say look at Verizon as a career, a place that you can learn, a place that you can develop, a place that you can network and become whatever it is that you want in life. We have lawyers, we have marketeers, we have operations people, salespeople. We have pilots that fly our planes and things of that nature. And so you can be anything you want at Verizon. And so what I say is look at this as a career, but more importantly, invest in yourself. You’ve got to make investments in yourself that will pay dividends for a lifetime.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (04:26):

Got it. Be open, right? Be open. Opportunity. Opportunity. That makes sense. Let’s talk about you personally. So I mean very quickly, this already sounds like a couple of North Easterners, but I’ll let you tell the rest of the story where you’re from.

Mark Tina – Verizon (04:38):

So I’m from New York City. I grew up in Queens, New York, and then at 32 years old, I started to move around with Verizon, pretty much still around the northeast though, so I’ll tell you about my family in a second. But we moved to Boston from there. We were back in Jersey then we were in Pittsburgh. That’s the furthest we went from New York. Then we were back in Boston and now we’re in New York. And so from a family perspective, my wife Nicole and I have been married for almost 20 years. We have two boys, Nicholas and Mark, Jr. 18 and 15 this year. So there is no shortage of chaos when I’m home, which I never am. So

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (05:21):

God bless your wife. God bless my wife. Fantastic. You said Jersey, you get to the Jersey shore, what’s the summer?

Mark Tina – Verizon (05:28):

So Jersey Shore is awesome, but for summers my favorite is Cape Cod in Massachusetts on the south shore there. We love Cape Cod. Like I said, the kids are getting a little older, so it’s a little boring to hang out at the beach with mom and dad. But for the last 10, 15 years, we go there every summer, we rent the same home and it’s just wonderful.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (05:48):

Good for you. Last question about you and then we’re going to get into Verizon tech stuff. Absolutely. Everybody’s got a superpower. Yep. What’s yours?

Mark Tina – Verizon (05:56):

I believe my superpower is connecting with people. And it’s interesting, I just met you and I feel a strong connection and I have this ability to find people, connect with people and build meaningful, deep relationships that matter. And they last a long time. And listen, you might need my help one day. I might need your help one day. And I believe a relationship is a two-way street where I like to give more than I take, and sometimes maybe I take more than I give, but in the end, my superpower and what I live on is my relationships with people that matter.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (06:32):

Makes sense.

Mark Tina – Verizon (06:32):

I

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (06:33):

Love that. Give without expectation of anything in return, it’s going to come back to you 100%. I love that. Alright, well let’s get into a little bit of that. I mean, you’re here, you’ve got the von v Teamer. I like that, by the way. I hadn’t heard that yet. I think if you made it this far in the podcast, you found this interesting, but you probably know who Verizon is or you think you know who Verizon is. Reset that for us. Who’s Verizon to you and who’s Verizon today? I

Mark Tina – Verizon (07:00):

Love that you said to reset that because Verizon has reset as a company over the last, I would say few years. We’ve always been known as the phone company, right? Can you hear me now? And back in the day, your landline would ring and it was probably a Verizon phone, especially in the Northeast, like you said, and cell phones. And we were the phone company. Verizon has evolved though to be a technology company where we provide so much more than the phone. Of course, we’re there for the connectivity,

Mark Tina – Verizon (07:27):

Whether it’s broadband for internet or mobility on our phones and tablets and other connected devices. But we’ve now taken things to a level where we’re providing full end-to-end services for our business clients as well as consumers. We think of ourselves as a company that helps the world to connect, to live, to recreate, to educate and to work. And so no one’s going anywhere without their connectivity. And so Verizon is a company that is focused on being that connection for human beings, again, whether it’s personal or professional. And so it’s more than just that connectivity where we offer many different software as a service solutions that are out there. We do cybersecurity. We do a lot of different things that I’m sure we’ll dive into, but we have evolved from being the phone company to being a technology provider that really helps human beings in all aspects of their life.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (08:22):

I get it. And you’re turning down that legacy too. You talked about building out the Fios network, right? Simultaneously turning down the copper network in along the spots and regulated. Coming off of that, being able to innovate around that is a super interesting story and I want to dig into that a little bit. Sure. We’ll do it in the vein of your team sends me some data out of the, you guys did a small business survey around technology. I think it was the end, was it fourth quarter last year? Possibly something along those lines. I pulled a couple stats out. Okay. So I figured maybe it’d be fun. I’ll toss a couple at you. Sure. Okay. Let me see. Ai, let’s talk. Every one of these podcasts ends up talking about ai. Sometimes I feel like we’re talking about AI for AI’s sake, but what interesting thing that came out of it was in the survey, 39% of SMBs say they’re utilizing ai and that’s more than doubled from 23. Contextualize that for me a little bit. In your mind, what are your customers actually doing today? That’s real.

Mark Tina – Verizon (09:26):

Yeah, so I think just a few short years ago, AI was like the future, it’s so far away and what is it and what are we going to do with it? And today it is everywhere into everything that we do. So I’ll speak very briefly on how we leverage AI within Verizon and then I’ll talk to answer your question specifically. So Verizon’s actually been leveraging AI for almost a decade in different ways. So we impact our customer experience leveraging AI where it’s say, inbound calls into our call centers. We use AI intelligence for effective call routing, get the right customer to the right representative to take care of their issue, or hopefully it’s a good issue that they’re calling in on. We also like to automate transactions using AI for our consumers. Everything is now digital and AI plays a big role in how we interact with our customers, but then also our employee experience.

Mark Tina – Verizon (10:17):

And this is something that I’ve invested a lot in as a leader at Verizon, where we give our employees tools that they’ve never had before. So I’ll give you some examples. Conversational intelligence we call it where we partner with companies like Kaya and Gong, where we’re able to learn how our representatives are interacting with customers to provide real time coaching, real time stats. They’ll end a meeting like you and I are having today, and they’ll automatically have the meeting notes. They’ll automatically have the next steps, the actions that need to be taken from there. We use AI for our quoting, for our forecasting. A lot of the different things that our representatives used to have, a lot of their cognitive workload

Mark Tina – Verizon (10:57):

Being burned on, it’s now just done automatically so that they can focus on being professionals and serving our customers more efficiently and effectively. So I could go on and on, but we’ll run out of time how Verizon uses it. By the way, we run our network based on AI these days. But for our customers, I’ll give you a great example. We just launched a generative AI assistant for small medium business customers. It’s super cool. So let’s say you wanted to go to a deli in your neighborhood, you can send a quick text in and say, Hey, what are your hours of operation today? What’s the daily special? Hey, can I order in advance? Hey, is Bill working today because he makes my favorite chicken cutlet sandwich and I want to make sure he’s there. Little questions like that could be simple, but what we like to do is make it easy, right? Small, medium business customers don’t have, maybe it’s the resources, the people or the capital to do what a lot of corporations do. So we’re trying to democratize that technology in a way that even the of customer can leverage AI just the way the largest of corporation can.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (11:58):

Let’s explore that use case just for a minute. Sure. Now the sandwich guy who maybe is listening is like, how do I turn that AI on?

Speaker – Bridgepointe (12:05):

Yeah.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (12:06):

A lot of times the challenge in business adopting AI is not certainly is the capability of the technology out there, but the ability to your point, to democratize it, turn it into something that’s functional and usable. And as it relates to ai, that is generally around making sure that the AI is informed. So is Mark working today? Because I like to cut with sandwiches. The northeast guy, I like to cut with sandwich, but make sure you get the balsamic on top with the mozzarella cheese and the red peppers. Absolutely. A hundred percent need it. I I’m Alo guy on with mine, but yeah, with the cutlet little broccoli, Rob. Yeah, love it. Love it. So now you need, now I’m love now I know too early for that, but so that guy, that sandwich shop guy, he’s got that information in various spots. Are you guys helping them? I mean I get delivering them the tech, but are you helping them inform the model? Yeah. Tell me about that process a little bit. Sure.

Mark Tina – Verizon (12:59):

So I’m not an expert in it.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (13:01):

It’s

Mark Tina – Verizon (13:02):

LLM, large language modeling and you have to feed the machine. It’s only as good as what’s fed into it. And so we actually have one of our partners who’s at this event with us that helps onboard that customer if necessary. And so they will help that customer to make sure they’re loading the right information into the model. And then as you know, it gets more and more intuitive as it gets utilized. So we do offer that service as well that comes with the product. So if that business owner just, Hey, I just want this to work, we can help

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (13:31):

You make it work in a very simple, and I think that’s interesting, compelling, I mean whatever language you want to put around it, because I think to your point about reset, right? You think about the phone company, right? You’re like, I get a service. I bought something. It’s a wire I get not only to sell it the technology, but to help customers adopt is really interesting. Yeah. Well that’s a cool story around that 75% of SMBs are currently using or planning to adopt ai. So there’s just plenty of opportunity for Verizon to engage with customers at that level. I love that. Something else you mentioned using AI in the network, and I think a good corollary on that is on the cybersecurity side. So I don’t know that people think of Verizon necessarily as a cybersecurity company, but you’ve got a ton of offerings around that, which we’ll get to in a minute. But let me throw some numbers at you from your survey. Sure. So 60% of small businesses have upgraded security tools for networks and devices or implemented cybersecurity measures over the past year. That’s at the SMB level. Is that number surprising? I think it should be

Mark Tina – Verizon (14:42):

Higher. I’m

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (14:43):

Surprised. Clearly. Yes. That’s

Mark Tina – Verizon (14:44):

Moving quickly.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (14:45):

Yeah. Okay, interesting. On top of that, which this I found even more interesting, half of SMBs implemented cybersecurity training for employees this year. We talk a lot on the show. We have security experts on here. Often the employee is actually the most risky attack factor inside of a business. And here you had SMBs investing in training that surprised me actually that it was that high. Are you guys involved in that process with them as well? Tell me more about that.

Mark Tina – Verizon (15:14):

We are, and so I’ll just tell you within Verizon, it’s interesting. So we educate our own employees myself, I go through trainings and I go through certifications to make sure that I am protecting company data at all time. But we send out phishing emails to our own employees to see what’s going to happen and how are we good at this or are we not? And you’re right, the end user, the employee is the number one threat. And so we use our mobile devices regularly and think about it, people are on the fly, they’re at events like this and a text or an email pops up and you click it and you’re in it and you’re on your phone and could be a bad actor. And so most recently the company sent out a Valentine’s Day phishing email. Everybody wants to see some love on Valentine’s.

Mark Tina – Verizon (16:00):

That is correct. And an overwhelming percentage that I’m embarrassed to say convict it even after all of the training. And so in all seriousness, we then get reporting back on that of, Hey Mark, 68% of your employees click something they shouldn’t have clicked. And I’m like, we got trained on this, why didn’t it happen? And I personally get excited. I’m serious when I realize it’s phishing and I don’t click it. I try to stay off that report. But all I’m saying is we invest in that training and education of our own employees. But we do, and I’m so glad you said this, not a lot of people realize Verizon is a dominant player in the cybersecurity just space. And first of all, we’re in the Gartner Magic Quadrant in the upper right where we belong. And for decades we’ve been providing solutions for customers in order to first of all detect. And then if a bad actor does get in to mitigate and obviously remediate what the issue is, we produce what’s called the DBIR, which is a data breach investigation report for over two decades. First of all, it’s not just Verizon, it’s many different third party players. It’s a great publication, it’s free, it’s available, companies use it, and then they educate their employees on it. We supplemented that with what’s called MSI, which is the mobile security index report

Mark Tina – Verizon (17:15):

Because a lot of the cybersecurity comes in on the endpoint, whether it’s the cell phone or the tablet like you have in your hand, whatever it may be. And so we’re there as well. The last thing I would say is most recently we’re very proud. We partnered with Accenture to take our efforts to the next level to really be able to continue to accelerate in this space as we pride ourselves. Because the connectivity’s there, the software’s there, the technology’s there, but if it’s not secure, it’s a big problem. And you’ve seen national retailers get taken down through their HVAC system, and my sister is the COO of a small business and they were held to ransomware to the tune of millions of dollars. And so it could be a small business and it could be a massive corporation. It could cripple your business.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (18:00):

Yeah, super interesting. And is the security conversation just a natural extension of the network conversation that, I mean obviously Verizon is known for, we started the whole thing about connecting the world. Is that sort of how you guys branch into it? Yeah. When you’re with customers,

Mark Tina – Verizon (18:19):

In my opinion it should be automatic. Now everything else, our best sellers, our seasoned experience sellers are going to automatically have that conversation. We train our people, we educate our people on just their sales sequencing, and you should never have a conversation about connectivity that does not include security. Understood completely.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (18:38):

One other thing, I was going through your website to prep for this and then I have some fun questions we’re going to get into. But I’ve done a lot, and we’ve talked a lot on this show about sort of rationalizing communications investments. So it had Verizon trunks into a phone system that was on site and then the pandemic happened and executives got Zoom, and then stuff was going on with the Office 365 side. The whole business is using teams. I saw Gartner, you mentioned Gartner earlier, a Gartner statistic that said that the average business communications and collaboration costs went up 30% in the pandemic. And now this, from our experience, most of our customers are saying, help me rationalize this. I don’t really need the phone system the way that the phone system was pre pandemic, but I need some of it. My employees want to use teams. We’ve got some people over here who have some zealotry around some meetings platform that they want to use. Tell me about that conversation in the Verizon, because I’m sure you’re getting asked the exact same question that we’re getting asked. How do you guys think about that?

Mark Tina – Verizon (19:43):

Yeah, so I’ll talk internally first. So the pandemic completely changed the landscape of how we operate. And while those costs went up, other costs went down because do you really need all of the real estate that you had? Sure. When you’re not going to have as many people in the office and there’s all sorts of costs that come there. So I think it was a little bit of the shifting of where the CapEx was being spent in the opex. But at the end of the day, we move to, depending on your job, what type of worker are you? So there is a mobile worker, which is what I am. So in the field out working and doing my thing, there is a hybrid, which is sometimes in the office, sometimes out of the office, but then there’s also people that are in our retail stores that are there every single day no matter what. And they were there during the pandemic, thankfully. And we’re extremely appreciative for the employees that helped us through that time to essentially help America through that time

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (20:34):

Critical infrastructure, employees, co, and our network. So how do they still have to go to work?

Mark Tina – Verizon (20:37):

Yeah, our network team had to be out there no matter what, right in the heat of it all. So we’ve got various models, but to your point, technology is critical, right? Because how else are you going to communicate And look, there’s variations of it. Like you said, there’s video conferencing, there’s of course old school telephony. But that technology has enabled us to realize, I’ll use this event as an example. Yeah, do we need to be here? Yes, because we we’re human beings. We need to connect and that’s relationships are formed. But maybe if you and I meet in a month from now, I don’t have to fly to where you are. You don’t have to fly to where I am. We should get on a quick video. We know each other and we can get our business done that

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (21:15):

Way.

Mark Tina – Verizon (21:16):

And so I think Verizon has really led the way internally as a tech company of how we leverage technology to continue to evolve through the pandemic. But then of course we bring these use cases and these different solutions to our customers and we start by asking questions, tell us about your business. Do you have remote field employees? Are you, we’ll go back to the deli example. You got to come to the deli to cut the sandwich. And regardless, we have technology

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (21:42):

For you that works well for you. Perfect. One thing that struck me as interesting as it relates to this conversation is I’m doing a little bit of pre-prep for this and I saw you guys have some products around Microsoft teams integrating with mobile experience. Just tell us a little bit about

Mark Tina – Verizon (22:00):

That. We’re super excited about that. So we signed an exclusive agreement a couple of years back actually with Microsoft. So Microsoft Teams obviously best in class platform. It fits in with the rest of the Microsoft suite that everybody’s so familiar with and comfortable with. And by the way, it’s secure.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (22:15):

We

Mark Tina – Verizon (22:15):

Talked about security. The challenge though is it’s as good as the wifi that you’re connected to From a connectivity standpoint, Verizon prides ourselves on the reliability of our network. Our network is very important to us. It is our core competency and our differentiator in the market. So everything we just talked about on Microsoft Teams can now ride the Verizon network anywhere that the Verizon network exists. And so you’re taking the actual connection from that what was traditionally wifi environment or wherever it was connected to in the office or the home, right onto your mobile device. Got it. And so it literally is seamless. You can actually move from the wifi environment to our commercial network back and forth. And there’s a whole plethora of features obviously that come with

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (23:00):

It,

Mark Tina – Verizon (23:01):

But just awesome solution that a lot of customers are taking advantage of.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (23:06):

Got it. Super cool. It’s been great chatting about Verizon and catching up on it and great hanging out today. Yeah. Yeah. We always end with a little bit of fun. Okay. I’ll get you with some of it, of course. Alright, let’s go. The first one might not be super fun. I’m looking over my list, but here we go. Alright, we’ll start with this one. Just what are you reading right now? Give me the what’s on your end table business book fiction. What is it? I’m going to tell you. Dash Diet,

Mark Tina – Verizon (23:31):

DASH. I do know what it stands for, but it’s ultimately a diet that helps to obviously eat healthy, help maintain a good blood pressure level. And so ultimately it just teaches me about the different foods I should be eating, what I should now be eating, how much cardio I need to be doing. Because on the road, especially in a place like Vegas, a lot of delicious great food that you should not be eating a lot of great delicious beverages you should not be drinking and a lot of gyms that you should be using. And so I’m reading it. I have a book, I have a magazine and I try to keep up on it to stay healthy. It’s important to me and that’s currently what I’m

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (24:07):

Super important on the road. I’m going to guess that cut with sandwich we were talking about was not on the menu. That’s so good. It’s so good. Alright, we’ll do a business question. Sure. Best business advice you’ve ever gotten?

Mark Tina – Verizon (24:18):

Ooh, that’s a great one. I’ve been blessed with a lot of great business advice. I think I would say the best business advice I’ve ever received is to think bigger. And I say that because it seems simple, right? Think bigger. Okay, what does that really mean? I think people become okay or comfortable in whatever zone they are in. And so, hey, I’m good. I have what I need, I enjoy what I’m doing, but what is that next level? What is that higher gear? How can you think bigger? How can you deliver more for your employees, for your customers, for your family? I come to work to provide for my family and I always try to think bigger. And again, I said I’m blessed. My kids have a lot more than I have, but I’ve had a few leaders that have really drilled that into me. Oh, you need to think bigger. You’re not thinking big enough.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (25:04):

Got it. I love that. It’s kind of a little bit, it’s like curiosity I think is undervalued as a thing that you focus on in with your employees. I think the curious ones are the ones who come up with a big ideas at the end.

Mark Tina – Verizon (25:21):

I want to throw one more in here. Go. It’s a little more on the personal side, but I’ll never forget the person who said this to me, be where your feet are and it’s so important personally and professionally and so I’m here with you. I am where my feet are, I am zoned in. There’s times at home I’m maybe watching a movie with the family. The family will be cracking up. I’ll be thinking about business. I’m not where my feet are and they’re like, dad, you’re not laughing. And I’m like, no, that was funny. And they’re like, what just happened in the movie? And I’m like, got it. Yeah. I say to equality, if you’re going to be at the little league field, be where your feet are. If you’re going to be at church, be where your feet are. If you’re going to be in business, be where your feet are.

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (25:58):

That’s great. See, there was a nugget. We told you to drop a nugget in here someplace. That’s quotable. I like that. Alright, now so here’s the fun one. We talked about pandemic. Yeah, that’s not fun. Obviously the fun here is whatever dystopian future you think we may end up in. I don’t know if maybe you were watching a sci-fi movie with the family, but we’re in some different future and there is only one app that’s still working on your Verizon Wireless phone. You get to choose which one it is. So choose it and tell me why. That’s the app you pick.

Mark Tina – Verizon (26:30):

I am old school and it would be absolutely text messaging just so that I can keep in touch with the people that I love. Yeah, super utilitarian, but I like it. Yeah, I know it’s plain. I know it’s boring, but if I got to have my text, we

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (26:46):

End up, you’re bringing your own future to the question, but I always get asked clarifying questions too. They’re like, well, how many people are still alive? I don’t know because I would be a different answer, but I’m totally with you on that one. You get maps, you get flashlights a good one depending on how bad things are, but it’s usually TikTok or YouTube or something along those lines. So I like it. You still want Verizon wireless text messaging to be on there. Mark, I really appreciate the time you spent with us today. I know this is a busy couple of days and it means a lot that you sat down with us. Thrilled to have met you. Like you said, if you build relationships that will we’ll definitely lean back into in the future.

Mark Tina – Verizon (27:29):

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve really

Scott Kinka – Bridgepointe (27:31):

Enjoyed the conversation. Thank you certainly, and thank you all out there. Wherever you are listening or watching for tuning into this episode of the Bridge Cast, we’ll see you on another episode soon. Listen, if you made it this far, there must have been some good content or you’re just a fan or a relative of mine. In either case, we appreciate you spending your most valuable asset with us, your time. We don’t take that lightly. We’d also like to say one more time that we’re appreciative of Bridgepoint Technologies and their belief and sponsorship of this show. We hope that if you or someone you know is thinking about your company’s digital transformation or simply the next IT project that you may not have the resources budget or time to get to, I’m sure that bridgepoint one of the country’s fastest growing technology advisory and procurement firms can help. Check out bridgepoint technologies.com. Don’t forget the E on bridgepoint or simply reach out to me at kinka, S-K-I-N-K a@bptthree.net. Also, take a minute please, if you would, to give us a five star review on your favorite platform. It helps give us the visibility to reach other people like you. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Bridge. I’m Speaker, and until next time, there’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the signal. Thanks.