Most IT mistakes aren’t technical — they’re decision mistakes made under pressure, with incomplete information, and too much influence from sales teams.

I’ve spent my career on all sides of IT decisions: as an engineer, a consultant, a service provider, and a buyer. I’ve seen how good teams end up with the wrong vendors, the wrong contracts, or solutions that look fine on day one and hurt a year later.

Today, I help companies make IT decisions with less risk — from defining the right strategy, to choosing vendors, to reviewing contracts before they’re signed, to fixing environments that have grown messy or expensive over time.

I’m not a reseller and my role is simple: help you slow down just enough to make the right call, and avoid mistakes that are hard to undo.

If you’re making an IT decision and want a second set of experienced eyes before committing, that’s usually where I’m most useful.

Max Clark

Five years ago, I hit record with no audience and no plan. I didn’t know if anyone would stick around.

It started in the margins. Between client work and late nights. Progress was uneven. There were long stretches where downloads didn’t move, growth stayed flat, and I questioned why I kept showing up. More than a few times, I sat down thinking it might be the last episode.

What kept me coming back was having a place to talk through the decisions I was watching operators wrestle with every day. The tradeoffs, the internal pressure, the problems that don’t have clean answers. The conversations reflected how technology actually shows up inside real organizations, not the version anyone sells.

Two hundred episodes in, with listeners in more than 100 countries, the biggest change wasn’t reach. It was my perspective. 

Every guest challenged something I thought I understood. Every hard conversation exposed how shallow certainty can be. Recording in public forced me to sit with being wrong and keep going anyway.

This podcast grew because the conversations stayed grounded in lived experience.

There’s still a lot to improve. I’m still learning. I’m still not done. 
But I’m proud I stuck with it long enough for the work to mean something. 

If you’ve listened at any point, thank you - I appreciate the time you gave it.

Making sure one IT decision doesn’t define your career.

200 Episodes In

Forget coffee/uber eats... if someone promised to do 20 burpees I'd take that meeting in an instant.

21 years ago I took my first flight

When I was a kid I didn't even know I could dream of doing this

I'm so grateful for the blessings I've received

What's the greatest lie the cloud sold?

That bandwidth is $0.05/GB

Current retail (aka no commit in a datacenter) is $0.00078/GB

We've helped clients sign volume deals for way less

If you're spending > $100k on egress we can help you save $$$!

February is a perfect rectangular month, four exact weeks Sunday to Saturday all perfectly contained.

If you've never thought about the insanity of our calendar and the arbitrary months (and their lengths) this is what we could be living instead.

Most people hear “AI in the contact center” and think efficiency.
Shorter calls. Lower costs. Better CSAT.

What I keep seeing is something else.

The demo looks great.
Then it hits production and things start breaking.

Teams assume they can just turn it on.
- No clear metrics.
- No guardrails.
- No ownership when real customers show up.

I sat down with Jim K. Tennant from Observe.AI to talk through why this keeps happening and what actually causes Contact Center AI projects to fail post-demo.

What actually happens when experimentation meets real operations - full story in comments 👇

One thing I keep seeing with AI projects - they don’t usually fall apart in the demo.
They fall apart later.

It starts with:
“Just connect it to our data.”
“Just point it at the knowledge base.”
“Just let it start taking calls.”

Then real calls show up.
The data isn’t as clean as expected.
Agents stop trusting the output and work around it.

At that point, the system is technically live - but no one really trusts it.

We unpacked this with Jim K Tennant from Observe.AI on this week’s episode — specifically why contact center AI breaks after approval, not before.

Episode drops Thursday.
Links in comments. 👇

Silicon Valley is the birthplace of tech
Los Angeles & Seattle are the gateways to the Pacific
New York the finance capital
Miami the gateway to LATAM
Atlanta credit card processing
Ashburn is the core of the Cloud

And now DFW... abundant land, power, and people

Open article: Data center construction boom positions Dallas-Fort Worth as national powerhouse for tech infrastructure - Dallas Business Journal by bizjournals.com

Data center construction boom positions Dallas-Fort Worth as national powerhouse for tech infrastructure - Dallas Business Journal

Fortinet CVE-2026-24858... WTF???

”An attacker’s valid FortiCloud session, tied to their own device, gets accepted as legitimate for other users’ devices.”

Free credit monitoring!

If you've ever purchased anything from Under Armor your free credit monitoring is coming

"When I was your age Amazon didn't exist, we had to wait weeks for things to show up!"

I can't breathe 😂

The difference between surviving and being in control.

I’ve been stuck on one moment from a recent conversation. We were discussing this nightmare scenario: Thanksgiving weekend. Peak season. 400+ people sitting in queue.

They knew the volume was coming - they just didn’t know when the plan would fall apart.

You know what happens next.

Everything goes reactive. Emergency hiring just to slow the bleeding. Agents picking up calls from customers who are already frustrated. By the time someone reaches a human, the experience is already broken.

But the part that bothered me most is that none of this was new.
They’d seen it before. They’d gotten through it before. And they were already bracing for it to happen again.

They got through it this time. Real question is what happens the next time around?

If this feels uncomfortably familiar, the episode explores what teams convince themselves is “fine”.. right up until it isn’t.

Michael Cibelli of PolyAI breaks down where things really fall apart. 

Episode drops Thursday - link in comments 👇

Open article: Node.js — Tuesday, January 13, 2026 Security Releases by nodejs.org

Node.js — Tuesday, January 13, 2026 Security Releases

Pegasus Technology Solutions

Account Executive

Excentus

•	Locate new business opportunities in regions where the Fuel Rewards program does not currently exist 
•	Organize, coordinate, and manage new customers from the initial sale to the long-term management of the business relationship
•	Analyze competitor products to determine the comparison of their loyalty program against the Fuel Rewards program
•	Introduced the Fuel Rewards program into regions without a fuel loyalty program
•	Develop business and strategic plans to assist management in the analysis of growth opportunities
•	Develop ideas for streamlining the process to on-board new customers to the Fuel Rewards program.

Account Manager - Participant Optimization

•	Directly managed and grew over 15 accounts with the addition of new accounts entering the fuel loyalty program.  
•	Worked with the current customer base to develop customer offers to facilitate the use of their fuel loyalty program.
•	Analyzed reporting and account management procedures and policies to effectively manage the growing relationship with accounts under my supervision.
•	Designed and implemented the structure for new customers to join the fuel loyalty program
•	Assisted with the project management role for the program support team.  Developed procedures and analyzed statistics to facilitate the move of a national call center.

Account Manager - Technical Services

• Assist the Account Management team with new site on-boarding and setup in our systems
• Configure new promotions for sites that are participating in the Fuel Rewards program
• Installed/Deployed sites for the Fuel Rewards program
• Assisted on-site technicians with getting the Fuel Rewards loyalty program online
• Member of the team responsible for installing the initial roll out of the Fuel Rewards program

Program Implementation Analyst

• Configured and shipped new hardware to Fuel Rewards customers that participate in the Fuel Rewards loyalty program
• Evaluate and repair company assets related to the functionality of the Fuel Rewards program
• Worked on the initial launch of the Fuel Rewards program that required the shipping of over 8,000 loyalty devices.

Production Hardware Analyst

Business Solution Integrators

• Provided technical assistance to over 400 end users, assisting with network access, printing, and application software operation
• Re-imaged laptops and maintained hardware infrastructure
• Provided maintenance, installation and configuration of network and workstation hardware and software
• Established and administered network physical layer including Cisco routers, switches, gateways, servers, NICs and cabling
• Activated and deactivated employee, customer, and company affiliate profiles

Senior Technical Support Analyst

I am an experienced Sales and Service professional with proven results. I enjoy working with a team to achieve business goals, building new relationships, and managing projects from inception to completion while staying within budget and on schedule. Experienced in developing and growing client relationships in several industries related to the Information Technology space.  Excellent communication skills combined with the ability to successfully manage client expectations has led to long-term client relationships.

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Max Clark

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taplio

The Battle

Max Clark

Ken Salyer

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Max Clark's LinkedIn Performance

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